


Lanterns

by OneTrueStudent



Series: Lanterns [1]
Category: Chronicles of Amber - Roger Zelazny
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-27
Updated: 2015-01-04
Packaged: 2018-02-10 15:48:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 14
Words: 31,316
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2030847
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OneTrueStudent/pseuds/OneTrueStudent
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After the Patternfall War and ignoring the Second Chronicles of Amber</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

1

When Amberites decide to kill each other it is best for mortals to get out of the way.

Arryn was a beautiful coastal city, long white beaches with perpetual mild winds from offshore, that was also the epicenter of the tournament fighting scene. Sandwiched neatly between the mountains and the depths, the city was driven by mining and shipping, and that engine had raised up sports teams and art. Originally the fighting had been mostly local, unofficial affairs, but higher in the mountains the real martial artists had lived and eventually they came down. Then the brawlers decided to make an issue of it, and money started flowing. Word went out by ship then plane, and by the time of vast telecommunications empires binding the world together, the Arryn Two Year Invitational was the place to compete in bare knuckle sports.

It was also the place to learn bare knuckle sports. Real money had come to what for years had been a poor man’s game. Schools and training halls were everywhere. They still were, but you needed wins at lesser tournaments to rank for an Invitation to the Two Year, and many of them weren’t cheap. Now you needed money.

Money liked to relax, and our beaches provided for that. Contenders came to train, and their entourages lay in the sun. Weather is as close to perfect as you can get. Winds off the sea are perpetually mild, and the winds coming down from the mountains cool the evenings. There is always seafood, and at Arryn, we take our seafood seriously. Don’t sell frozen lobster, claiming it’s fresh caught. People will know. Fighters come and money comes with them, and the days wash past. If one wanted to learn to fight unarmed by day, and spend the nights where women didn’t wear too many clothes, Arryn was the place to be. It was expensive, though; very, very expensive. One would need the wealth of nations to really devote themselves to it.

Or you can work two shitty jobs. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to Arryn. For the best views in town, go to the Colonial Armaments Hotel. Every suite overlooks the beach.

I was wearing a billboard and dancing beside a freeway when a oddly dressed individual approached me. He wore tights and a peculiar hat that looked like a capsized boat. Still, I was wearing a sign, so I was in no place to judge. He asked me about my work.

“Where is this Colonial Armaments Hotel?”

“Second right, follow that around until the palm trees start, and then it’s on the right. The beach comes right up to it,” I replied, hitting him with a big fake smile.

“And where is the best fighting school?” he continued.

“The best? McKain’s Gym, up under the mountains. It’s on the far hills. We have nine champions of the Two Year Invitational in our ranks.”

“We?” he repeated. “Do you train there or teach?”

“Both. I’m a junior instructor, but testing for my mastership this winter.”

“Show me.”

I stared at him. “What?”

“Show me. Demonstrate your skill.”

“Dude, I’m wearing a sign. I’m obviously at my other job now.”

The weirdo gave me a flat, bored look, and then pulled a roll of bills out of his pocket. I’ve never seen anyone show that much pure disdain for money. Even people who show off and spend more than they should like to make a point of how little they cared for it. This guy was annoyed at having to reach into his pocket, and more annoyed at how it took him to count the bills.

“How much do you make a year? Twenty thousand? Thirty?” He started counting out hundreds like it was a nuisance, the repetitive swatting of biting flies. 

“About eighteen,” I replied nonplussed.

Sandy, for that was the name he would give me later, snorted in disgust. He had already counted past that and couldn’t be bothered to go back. He was at around twenty six right then. “Eighteen thousand. Eighteen. And you’re worried about losing your job.” 

Sandy shook his head in contempt, then pulled the thick wad of cash he had in hand off the thicker, immense wad of cash he put back in his pocket, and held it out to me between two fingers. “Here is money. Fight me right now. I will double it if you win.”

I was out of the billboard in seconds and stretching out in my trunks. I always wear trunks under the costume; it’s too hot to wear anything else. Sandy couldn’t be bothered warm up, or even remove his stupid little hat, but he did afford me the short time I needed. We hopped a barrier to get away from the freeway, and on the coarse scrub-grass that cut the feet, we had our match. 

In some ways it was a perfect fight. To start he had his hands up, but after initial feints and taps, he lowered them. I came overtop with sharp jabs, rocked him on his heels, and backed off. He advanced. I pulled his guard up, drummed his mid section. He went down to block, and I rattled his teeth. He kept coming, and his guard fluttered up and down. I worked him from head to thigh with huge, sweeping combinations we train mostly as cardio and balance drills. 

He wasn’t completely fresh. His footwork honestly wasn’t bad, and he kept a level head. He just knew nothing about fighting with his body. He didn’t know how to block a kick or a punch, and for all his mobility, it gave him no power and balance when he retaliated. He never hit, because his counters were huge, wide arm swings he chambered over the ocean. What kept him in the game was durability. 

After a minute he shouldn’t have had an intact rib. He'd grunted once. After five minutes he should have been exhausted from the beating I was laying on him. He hadn’t started sweating. My fists were starting to ache from connecting at full strength to his ribs. Imagine that, for a moment. Imagine that. I kicked him in the head until my shins hurt. 

Finally I tagged him up and down, pulled his hands to his waist, and then leaped, throwing the jumping knee into his unguarded face. It’s more complex than it looks because not only do you leap for power, but then you torque in the air. It’s a fight finisher if it lands, but risky because if it doesn’t, the opponent can can punch you out of the air and with all your weight driving you into his fist, one way or the other it’s usually a knock-out. 

Sandy blocked with his face. That isn’t an euphemism. When he realized what was happening and where my knee was going, he head-butted me (Incorrectly I might add) directly in the kneecap and smashed me out of the air. I felt the wrath of God. I collapsed in agony, my leg was vibrating and limp, and ate scrub grass in the unkempt freeway margin. Dirt went up my nose, and coarse foliage cut my lips. It took me a few heartbeats to put together what had just happened.

“Get up,” grunted Sandy, annoyed. I couldn’t believe him. His face was turning a little red. “Get up if you want your money.”

I had too. I did. I climbed back upright and went to work again. Now I couldn’t kick, because I didn’t really trust my left leg. He kept advancing, walking through board-breaking punches to paw at me, shoving slow punches like he was pushing a fist between us. I stayed clear and resorted to wider tactics, fast connections and escapes. There are vulnerable spots all over the body: the solar plexus, throat, eyes, groin, etc. Have you ever seen someone shrug off a full body uppercut to the crotch? I have. Once.

“I’m not impressed,” Sandy finally judged. 

“You haven’t laid a finger on me,” I grunted at him.

“And yet you’re doubled over, panting, and I’m bored,” he replied.

“Yes, but you haven’t shown any kind of skill,” I snapped at him between breaths. “Fine, you’re more durable than I am, but if I could hit like you, you’d already be dead. I’ve put a hand to you dozens of times, maybe hundreds, and yes, you take a beating like an elder god, but that’s only so good.”

“And if I had a weapon, you’d already be dead.”

“Maybe, maybe not.” I had my wind back and stood up straight. My leg was still spasming, involuntary twitches of the calf making standing hard. I had to start rocking to keep my balance. “If we both had weapons and I could finish you in twenty hits, you’d be long dead. Remember, you still haven’t connected.”

Sandy glanced at my leg, giving lie to my statement, but he seemed moved. “Arguable. But that may be close enough. If I could connect like you, you’d definitely be dead, because there’s no way you can take what I can.” A thought occurred to him, and he admitted, “Which is good enough. Take me to this school of yours. You lost, but you can keep what I already gave you.”

“What would you do? Take it away?”

“Yes.”

“You’d never catch me.”

“Bet your life on that?” He glanced at my leg again.

No. No, I wouldn’t. “I earned the money, but I will show you to the school. It is the best school in Arryn,” I insisted. Sandy shrugged.

We set out walking and feeling drifted into my leg. It was nothing permanent. Once I tried to make conversation. 

“What was that footwork you used?”

“Sport fencing. Challenging, but rigid. What I did was very stylized, and no use in a fight.” He scowled, and then shrugged off the matter as irrelevant. I didn’t try to engage him again.

 

McKain’s Gym is grey cinder blocks on a broad cement pad. The mountains rise almost directly from the back door, and a number of tracks, some switched for ease, run up the side of Barr’s Peak. The mountain is beautiful in the early autumn, still wrapped in green. The gym was less so but gets double points for scenery.

Inside is a fairly typical cardio room with weights in the back. To the right is a series of smaller rooms for stretching, public access classes, and room for our almost cultish circuit training group. They’re weird, but they do killer workouts. In the back, only accessible by a couple of low profile doors, is another area just as big as the front where the fighters work. 

I took Sandy to Gruapa, the man who runs the school. Gruapa is a coach, and McKain was his first Two Year champion. McKain’s probably the most popular of them all, and they’ve worked out a licensing deal for his name. Now Gruapa’s working on a team angle, trying to develop a stable of fighters across all weight classes to sweep the podium. His team has taken two golds and two silvers in a single Two Year, but hasn’t taken more than one medal in the last three. He’s a bald little man with a donut of fuzz around his ears, beady eyes, and an intense expression. He was wearing a track suit when we came in, perched by a ring where the ground fighters were practicing. 

“Gruapa, can I have a minute?” I pulled him aside. “You need to meet someone.”

He did, sizing Sandy up. Sandy was directly to business. “This man tells me you run the best school. I’m interested in a private lesson, now, for several hours.”

Graupa noticed the visitor hadn’t given his name, and cocked an eye at me. I couldn’t help him, because I hadn’t learned it yet either. 

“Son, this is how this works. First you need to try out, like an audition-”

“You’re not listening,” interrupted Sandy, and the bill fold came out. I stared at it, to realize this was a different wad. The other wad had been hundreds, and these were ten thousands. Sandy pulled off ten. “This is an audition, but it isn’t for me. This is for you. I’m here to find out if your school is worth my time.” He gestured while he talked, waving a hundred K around to make his points. 

Those points were not lost on Graupa. “What exactly do you want to know?” probed the coach, trying to pin our visitor down. 

“Fighting, real fighting, with my hands. What to do if my weapon gets taken away. I’m not interested in winning medals, I’m interested in handling attempts on my life.” Sandy pulled another ten thousand out while mentioning his life. We were all taking him very seriously, myself, Graupa, and the half dozen stray guys who were listening in.

“You know weapons?” Graupa asked.

“Sports. Not useful.” The coached eyed the stack grow by another ten thousand, and I could see Graupa was starting to think of it like ‘his stack.’ 

“Well, we can show you a thing or too. I’m Graupa. And you are, sir?”

Sandy blinked. “Sandy,” he said. “Just Sandy.”

“Right, Sandy. Want to change and get into the ring?”

“This will be fine.” 

The man was wearing tights. I was the only one who wasn’t making erroneous judgments from that.

Graupa showed Sandy how to stand and hold his hands, how to throw a punch and how to block one, and by the time that was done, the bored crowd had dispersed. It was replaced with a new crowd, new fighters and old hands, because Graupa rarely taught himself any more. We all had a lot of respect for him. Ojum, a wiry black man who watched our coach from the ringside, had two Two Year flyweight golds, but still took the words to heart. You can always hear the basics one more time. Then Graupa pulled me into the ring, put us both in pads, and told us to spar.

Giving Sandy the barest hint of what to actually do was like creating a monster. When I couldn’t see his punches coming before he started throwing them, Sandy started posing a real threat of actually connecting, and that was catastrophic. In 500g gloves he tumbled me out of the ring on my head. Graupa put him to work on a heavy bag, which Sandy broke, and then switched him to a heavier, leather bag because canvas wasn’t sufficiently resilient. The blond pretty boy started slowly until he had the nuances of making a fist down. There’s more to it than people admit, but Graupa had his number and wouldn’t let him work hard until he wouldn’t break his own wrists. Then we stepped back to watch as Sandy built up steam from jabs to four punch combinations. 

He punched at full strength, full speed, without stopping or slowing down, for four straight hours. We closed the gym down around him. That isn’t human. It isn’t within human capacity. People can’t do that. People on steroids and cocaine, mainlining speed until their hearts explode, can’t do that. Not after a workout. Not with every punch hard enough to set 120 kg swinging up to bang into the ceiling, back down, and a second hit to stop the bag completely and send it banging into the ceiling again. 

Look, you just can’t do that. It can’t be done. We weren’t making fun of Sandy’s hat any more. No one was saying a word about anything. 

“Hey, we’re closing,” interrupted Tyde gently. Tyde was a polite, respectful man, and the absurd display we were all watching had subdued him more than usual.

“Are you?” inquired Sandy, before paying enough attention to hear the question. “So you are.” He stopped, and the bag finished its swing, a straining in the chains almost to the bare I-beam it hung from. 

“You made a lot of progress today,” said Graupa. Coach had stayed late, and now he was giving his usual after session debrief. “You’re throwing the punches correctly, and you’ve clearly got no shortage of power. Once you get your technique a little better so you don’t give as much warning, and learn to work angles to pull your opponent’s guard away, you’ll be a real terror.”

“What do I need to work on?” asked Sandy. It was blunt, but not the hostile, arrogant directness of before. He was finally sweating, and beads rolled down his hair.

“Offensively, you need to perfect kicking as well as striking, and also get body position and spacing down. Beyond that, have you any ground fighting experience?”

“No.”

“Well, that’s key. Stand up is only half the game. Defensively, you need to learn to block on your feet, defend against the take-down, and defend if you do get taken down. Also, you said you want to learn defenses against weapons, which will be mostly the same techniques as standing against a striker but with a heavier emphasis on dodging.”

“All right, I’m convinced,” Sandy agreed. “I want lessons, eight hours a day, every day, until I’m sure I know enough. I’ll pay you a hundred thousand denarii a week. Out of that you’ll take care of all expenses in the gym. Also, I’ll need a few training partners. You,” he pointed at me. “You’re one. Ten thousand a week to you. Find a few more guys. Be ready to begin tomorrow. I’ll eat breakfast at dawn, and come here after that. Be prepared.”

And that’s when I decided to quit my third job, the other shitty one, and train full time.

This is how a superman trains. A car from the hotel delivered him after breakfast, and he began with an hour of strength circuits, every day because he didn’t require recuperation time. After that was several hours of technique instruction followed by several hours of drill, bag work, rolling, or sparring. Finally we did weapons practice. By evening a car arrived to return him to his hotel. He spent the nights on the beach or with the ladies, and his training partners rotated in and out. We needed off days. He didn’t.

I did make an allowance to vanity and persuaded him to get real training clothes. There was something demoralizing about the superman wearing tights. It shouldn’t have been an issue, because we all claim to judge people by their abilities, not their clothes. I told Sandy it was because tights could restrict his bloodflow, impairing muscle development, and prove a hindrance. He acceded because he didn’t care, and Graupa paid for matters because he wanted his unnatural protege to wear McKain’s logo on his chest. He also stopped wearing the stupid little hat.

 

For all his disdain Sandy was clearly motivated. That kind of determination doesn’t come from normal pride. Well over a year later Sandy was still relentlessly devoted to his work and coming up on the professionals in terms of skill. No one was within his league in terms of power, but he was only humanly fast and inexperienced. We couldn’t stage real bouts with him because he did too much damage, and we couldn't do enough. Everything was either a point match or shadow boxing. 

An ordinary evening we finished up and he went outside to meet his driver. I followed him, and got his attention in the parking lot.

“Sandy, I was wondering if you were looking for help in anything, or if you needed any kind of work done,” I said, breaching the matter.

“No,” he replied, adding, “What do you mean?”

This was hard. I tried to explain things, but as his hotel’s black sedan purred into the parking lot, I realized the futility of asking if he needed anything. Maybe if I made it personal? Unlikely, but possible. 

“My cousin got attacked. There were two of them, and they had knives. She lost a lot of blood. She’s stable in the hospital, but it’s expensive and-”

“Oh, you want money,” he cut me off. 

“Well, you’re obviously not from around here, and you might need things. I’m not looking for charity, but if you’ve got jobs or something that the hotel might not be able to take care of, I was offering my services.” 

“I doubt your services include anything I can’t have done by the resort staff. I’ve given you more than to half a million denarii by now, so you’re either wasting it or not that poor.” He turned away from me, and the car glided to his side. “Good training session. Stay focused.”


	2. Chapter 2

2

I'm going to use a few proper words I didn't know at the time. 

The car halted gracefully, and the rear door opened from within. Sandy was looking at the mountains in disdain, mostly to not look at me, and a man exited the vehicle carrying a sword. Sandy didn't have much warning. The stranger's name was Vincent, and that's something I didn't know. Vincent went for a two handed cut and laid the edge against Sandy's neck perfectly. It landed precisely between the vertebra in the neck.

I was completely confused because I didn't know what Vincent had been trying to do. Sandy startled and jumped away, and Vincent, even more startled, went en guarde. Sandy recognized him, and smirked, a full body gesture that ran from his hair to toes. His back, hands, and feet all radiated smug self-satisfaction, and his lips were beaming.

That had to hurt, but you don't knock someone unconscious by hitting them in the neck. You aim for the base of the skull. 

They regarded each other an instant.

"Shadow," Vincent realized, and understanding washed over him as visibly as Sandy's smugness.

"Blades don't work here," Sandy agreed.

Vincent hit him again, Sandy blocked, and they went at it. The stranger was tagging him like mad, but of course it didn't do anything. His sword was a broad, blunt thing with a big counterweight in the pommel. Vincent was whipping it with one hand or two equally easily, and slugging with it. 

Yet that was it. Not doing any real damage, it was just an irritation, and we've trained for distractions. Sandy suddenly pressed an assault, got low, and wrapped Vincent's legs. They went down and rolled. The driver spooked and floored it over them, smashing his bumper. Sandy came up on top, full mount, deep heels, and started pounding Vincent into the asphalt. 

"Enough!" and Vincent flung a hand at him. It shouldn't have connected. It certainly shouldn't have exploded in rainbow fragments and shrapnel. Yet there it did, and they parted. Vincent got up and rolled, and Sandy pulled himself out of a tree.

"Shadow," mocked Vincent. 

"Why are you here?"

"To stop you."

"Not possible."

"You can't do this."

"It doesn't sound like it will be that hard." Sandy shrugged. He stretched and got loose, while Vincent kept his sword in hand. These two monsters had just been run over by a car, and they were flexing like their match hadn't begun. 

They circled, and Sandy went low again, trying for a takedown. Vincent parried with his sword, but Sandy got a grip on it. Looking back I don't think Vincent really had all the implications of blades not working clear yet, but at the time, not even knowing how edges worked, I was just confused. The fighters strove against each other, and Sandy lashed out, catching Vincent by the waist. He lunged and tried to put the fight on the ground again.

Instead a good chunk of Vincent's skin just sloughed off. Sandy ate road, and Vincent jumped on his back, weeping a black and grey fluid from his open flesh. It smelled acrid, and my eyes burned. The stranger smeared his weapon with his own acid blood and started stabbing, while Sandy threw an escape.

It was then I realized how bad being nearby was. I ran. 

 

Some time later I was in my apartment having whiskey for my nerves. I wasn't really sure what was going on. My place was nice but small, with a main door that opened into the kitchen, and a main room indistinct from the kitchen save by flooring. I kept a few bottles of decent stuff and was hitting a particularly good one with no regard for the quality of beverage. 

Sandy kicked the door down and grabbed me by the throat, slamming my head into a light fixture and holding me there as the hot metal lampshade burned my face.

"How did you know what fencing is?" he demanded.

I gurgled at him.

"Answer me!"

More gurgling.

He lowered me and put me partially through a wall, then pulled me back into the kitchen. His thumb finally eased back on the pressure over my trachea. I convulsed in coughing, and he slapped me but good.

"Answer me!"

I had a few really good responses, but discretion got the better of sarcasm. Also, this man just hit me with the ceiling. "Fencing is a sport! You tag people with foils!"

"How could you know that?"

"What is wrong with you? It's a foil! It has a pointy end on the top!"

"Really?" he demanded. "Except edged weapons don't work in this shadow. I know. I made sure of that. That's the whole reason I came here. So you couldn't know about fencing, and you couldn't know about points." 

His hand shut my airway like a vice, and he pressed me into the refrigerator. His grip was merciless. The door began to crumple behind me, shoving my chin down into his wrist, as he furiously ground me into the appliance. With his free hand he was rummaging around beside me, outside the range of my vision. I was losing the periphery into a staticy haze.

"Points don't work here, mortal," he said, holding up a long, barbeque skewer. "You blew your cover years ago, and I never noticed until now. Points don't work!" and he slammed the skewer into my shoulder.

Obviously it passed right through and effectively nailed me to the wall. Sandy looked baffled. He let go of my throat and stepped back, and I started shrieking.

"Why did that work?" he asked philosophically.

"What is wrong with you!?" I demanded, yelling. When he'd let go I'd fallen, all my weight had landed on the skewer and that hurt beyond belief. I got up, took the pressure off, and clawed at my shoulder in the reflexive urge to hold the pain. 

Sandy had stepped back with a weird, confused expression. Then he found another skewer and started lancing a lemon. He did this ten or twenty times to be sure. Then he went through my silverware drawer.

"You don't have any knives," he commented.

"What are you talking about?"

"Knives. You don't have any. That's because blades don't work. But impaling weapons do. Points do. Huh. Never thought about that."

"Are you daft? In all this time haven't you ever been in a kitchen?"

"Why would I?"

"To see how food is made!"

"What? Like some kind of peasant?" 

I couldn't believe it. It wasn't possible. That kind of ignorance of eating was inconceivable. It was every bit as nonsensical as-

Throwing lightning? Out punching an entire gym? Strength circuits with a training max of about a car? Those things this guy did all the time that I'd gotten used to? 

Sandy put his hand on my shoulder and calmly pulled the barbeque skewer out. It didn't hurt as much as going in. He rolled his eyes ceilingward, and then made an expression that said, "You've seen too much. Bad luck." The skewer rolled around in his grip.

"Please don't kill me," I asked, and I'm not sorry I begged. "My sister honestly was jumped, and I do need to pay for her transfusion. She needs a type suppressor, and she can't afford it without me."

Sandy was standing over me with me death in his hand. The skewer was already covered in blood, and I don't know if he would have hid the body, burned the whole place down, or just left. Arryn had to be a little important to him or else he wouldn't have been about to silence me. 

"A what?" he asked.

"Type suppressor. Alessandra is a universal rejector. She can't take any blood by transfusion without a type suppressor," I explained, fast as possible.

Sandy was looking at me like a strange bug. Somehow I had piqued his curiosity. "You have a chemical that suppresses blood types?"

"I don't; the hospital does. I can get some for you," I swore.

"It suppresses any blood type?" he pressed.

"Anything. Anyone can take blood from anyone with that in their system." I was almost babbling, talking fast to get the words out. 

"Interesting," Sandy replied. He gave me a long, thoughtful glance, then smashed my head into the floor before stabbing me a dozen times in the guts and torso. I tried to scream, but he closed my airway again. Then in casual calm, he took my phone and dialed emergency. 

"Hello, operator? There's been a terrible accident. I need help right away."

 

Excuse me if I gloss over a few things.

He broke my voicebox. I woke up briefly in OR prep, tied down, trying to scream and finding out I couldn't. The doctors had run a mess of injections in and out of me. Needle points pierce the skin so easily. They drugged me hard when I started thrashing, and that paralyzed me before I lost consciousness again. 

Sandy was watching through the 'family window,' big glass laced with wires to prevent breakage. He and a nurse were talking. She wore a mouth guard, but his lips I could read. He was amused by her descriptions of treatment. They used heat to break the skin when necessary and dealt with the consequences. My consequences were I'd lose a lot of blood, more than half what I carried. I would need transfusions desperately.

"That's terrible," Sandy's mouth motioned through the glass. He was looking at me through the glass, holding my eyes. "There won't be any problems, will there?"

The nurse said something. She explained some difficulty. 

"Oh, I'm so sorry to hear that. Can anyone in his family be a donor?"

More mumbles.

"He has no next of kin? Damn, for some reason I thought he had a sister. What will you do?" and then later, "Is there any way I can help? Could I volunteer to donate? He's a dear friend."

The nurse said something else, and Sandy's concern was the worst act of malice I've ever seen. I couldn't speak, couldn't move, and some young doctor was running an IV into me to prep for my transfusion. 

"Well, could you at least check?" Sandy offered. "If I can do anything at all, I'd feel better."

The nurse was nodding, and horrifyingly I was starting to fall asleep. I fought, but they just gave me stronger and stronger drugs. Sandy was standing on the other side of the glass wall, worried, but in an instant the nurse was looking away, he hit me with that smirk from before. He wanted me to know.

I faded out, and the hospital saved my life.


	3. Chapter 3

3

Funny how infrequently some people use names. Mine is Roland. I wasn't hiding it for any particular reason.

Suppose you had infinite anything at your disposal. The only limiting factor was whatever you chose had to work within a set of rules, call them natural laws, that you didn't know and didn't have time to experiment on. Your objective is to kill someone, and the one thing you know about those natural laws is that they were picked to prevent you from doing exactly that. What do you do?

Nuclear devices never work. They're the first thing people preclude. You don't want to throw the planet into the sun because there's no way to confirm success after that. Likewise you aren't going to burn the universe to ash and then pick through it, looking for dental work. Understand this properly. Success is your second priority. Your first is to be sure.

I came out of anesthesia into a world of suck. Everything hurt from face to toes, and amazingly my hair ached. Much of it had fallen out, which was a known but uncommon allergic reaction to broad spectrum type suppressors. The rest tingled unpleasantly. The room was dark.

Dogs were barking in the hallways unlike any dogs I've ever heard. The pitch was deep and complicated, multiple tones of howl laid over each other. These dogs reverberated when they barked. It sounded like they were below me, and over the time it took to finish waking up from my chemical nap, the dogs got louder.

It probably had nothing to do with me, right? Of course. I dragged myself out of bed, pulling plugs and wires out of my skin, and stood shaking. My legs rebelled but ultimately held. I put an IV stand to a window and left.

The sky was black with plagues of wasps. They were starting at the top, working their way down the walls of the building, in a sinking cloud of furious hate. They were seeking vent holes, air intakes, air conditioning units, any access point. I jumped, aiming for something soft. I got the roof of a Crently, but it couldn't have been worse than whatever was coming.

I picked the lock, hot wired it, and drove. In my haste I nicked a finger through the bandages and squirted a drop of blood on the asphalt, but didn't think anything of it at the time. The hospital retreated into the distance, and I hit the freeway looking for Sandy. He and I needed to have words. 

A Crently is a luxury midsize that runs on something similar to diesel. It took me up the mountains at a stately hum, ignoring the other cars on the road. A surge of them left town behind me, running along the coast, but it dwindled before the hills. Most turned back. I got several thousand meters of elevation and parked at a scenic viewpoint.

Dusk was taking the town. There were no overtly suspicious phenomena transpiring, and low clouds were coming from the sea. It looked very tranquil. I touched my face and found my head encased in bandages. Everything still hurt. That persuaded me this wasn't a hallucination. I wondered if I was mad, an asylum escapee, on the road with a stolen car and nothing to lose. It was pleasantly melodramatic. I went under the hood of the Crently and found the anti-theft device. 

My third job, the second shitty one, had not been precisely legitimate. It wasn't illegal, per se. I just knew how to steal cars. 

I headed back up the mountains. The roads didn't go to the really nasty stuff, and I didn't want to trust myself to my feet. Yes, the vehicle was properly speaking stolen, but I really needed it right then. I was also getting tired. I found a ravine up a side road, hid the car, and slept. I went back and forth on sleeping in the car, because it would be a world of problems if I was found in it. If I left it though I'd be deprived of shelter, and my prints were everywhere. 

Around midnight there was an explosion that rocked the mountains. I woke up to the peaks swaying like trees in the wind, and the sky had turned sanguine. Above the clouds deep purple rivers pulsed between the stars, looking like nothing so much fat veins. I tottered out of the car and wondered if this was it, the end times, some final armageddon. Winds ripped leaves off the trees and pelted my face with loose stones, and I heard them as if for the first time. The breezes were laughing, a deep, smug laugh. They laughed in mockery, and they sounded like Sandy. 

I crept back into the car and listened to the radio. Fires had broken out on the beachfront. A reported admitted that 'plagues of locusts and wasps' was the only way to describe the weather, but the blazes seemed to be thinning their numbers. Dogs were running amok by the mountains. When the earthquakes subsided, I eased the car back onto the road and headed uphill, away from Arryn. 

The car ran out of fuel at three thousand meters. I pushed it up another five hundred out of bloody-mindedness and how much I didn't want to try to outrun a plague of wasps on foot, were it to come to that. I crested a pass and coasted for kilometers, nursing the brakes at only the tightest of turns, hoarding speed like a dragon. It ran out eventually, but then a fuel station was nearby. Things in Arryn were calming down. The apocalyptic times were over, and a good dump of rain had put out the fires. There were dead bees everywhere, and people were shooting neighborhood dogs in fear. It was a good time to be out of the city. I acquired new plates for the Crently and holed up. 

No one said anything about my face being a white muslin ball. I keep forgetting that no matter how distinctive I think I am, most other people just don't care. I ordered delivery, food for three, and went to the bathroom to take my bandages off.

Underneath Sandy's face stared back at me. I blinked once, slowly. Sandy mirrored me. I grimaced. My chipped tooth was gone, replaced by Sandy's pearly whites. With an awful compulsion, I pulled the bandages off my hands. Sandy's mitts were bigger than mine, but his knuckles weren't so callused. His hands felt awkward when I thought about it, and natural when they slipped my mind. 

A host of reasons he would do this sprang to mind, none of which included my survival. 

The bell chimed, and my food was here. Abandoning subtlety I threw a paper bag over my head and answered the door. The guy sounded confused. I gave him money to go away. He did. He cared, but not more than a fifty percent tip.

Surprise that didn't surprise me kept hitting me. This shouldn't be a thing. Superhuman strength, Vincent, the ignorance of basic cutlery, each of those had startled me in turn, and after the first, they should have been expected. This should have been expected, or at least unsurprising when it did happen. It wasn't. I couldn't get over it. I kept staring in the mirror, looking at myself, giving myself little tests to see if it really was me. It was. It copied my every facial expression, even a few that felt awkward with disuse. Sandy didn't wiggle his nose in distaste, which I liked to do, and that felt rusty. My mirror did. Good God. I climbed into bed, piled pillows over my head until the light couldn't come in, and slept like the dead.

 

In the morning I went to a hospital. I told the nurse I was having a mild reaction from a blood transfusion, and wanted to speak with someone. I gave them a fake name and address, something far out of town. 

"Body hair loss?" asked the doctor, examining my forearm. "And you think it's related to a blood transfusion?"

"It started not long after," I replied. My voice was different. In my ears it wasn't Sandy's, but off, like hearing a recording of yourself. 

"It could be, and it might not. If it is there are some things I can do, but they're bad for you if given unnecessarily. So I'll have to rule them out first."

"We can do a complete physical first," I suggested, and that was what we did. It wasn't bad. 

"Well, you're right. Your body is beginning to show slight signs of rejection. I'm surprised you're not on a broad spectrum type suppressor."

"I was," I admitted. "I lost my medication when everything went sideways in Arryn."

The doctor sighed. His entire body sagged with the weight of his patience, and he stroked his eyes with his palm. "You should have mentioned that," he chided me in an exhausted tone. 

I could have, but then I wouldn't have gotten the physical. Did he think I was in this for fun?

I shrugged.

"Do you know what you were on?"

"No."

"Of course not," he agreed, faintly, and his martyring annoyed me. "I'm going to put you on delta-hemotemia. Take your prescription to the pharmacy, and they'll order it. It may take a few days to come in, as our suppliers in Arryn have been disrupted by the weather. It's one pill every day, taken with food and water, until the entire bottle is gone. That's four months. You'll be fine until it comes in but don't miss doses. The hair loss could return, and you could have a serious reaction."

He gave me the script and sent me out. 

The pharmacist said four days and tried to put me on something else in the mean time. There was a back-and-forth between her and the doctor over the details, but they came to an agreement. I got five little brown things to take until my delta-whatever came in. I popped one and departed.

The car was where I left it, near the front door, parked so I didn't need to reverse out of the spot. Thick evergreen trees came to the very edge of the parking lot, filling the air. The mountains on either side were either naked stone or forest, and the sky above was an innocent baby blue. I had my key in my hand, made it to the car, and looked around as I unlocked the door. I saw the bullet coming. 

I dodged that like a ninja master because it was moving twenty times slower than it should be. The shooter compensated with volume. Before I got behind the wheel there were a dozen rounds in the air, and to screaming rubber and turbo whine I blasted out of the parking lot. Broken glass shattered over and around me. Beautiful leather died an unseemly death. I drove with the seat all the way back, looking out the front windshield via reflections in the broken rear one, and that is a miserable way to drive. I may have missed a curb, but I doubt it. The Crently was not built to be concerned with such details, and it handled them.

On the main road I bounced off a delivery truck briefly onto two wheels. The fall bounced me off the broken glass in the cabin. I sat up, went through the median and a fast food parking lot, and caught a gravel road on the far side. Rocks went everywhere, and the car refused to go straight. I wound up sideways as I tried to get back on a paved road, and saw a dozen guys on horses with machine guns chasing me. They couldn't hit anything at full gallop, but they could try. Crently nose and tail finally decided where they wanted to be, and the engine hit the rear axles with power. There's no way the cavalry could catch me.

The guys in front could. They had emplaced heavy weapons and a powerful disregard for public safety. Fifty cals pounded in terrifying slow motion, ripping gravel out of the asphalt as bullets hued through the air. I went sideways again, and this time the car went up intentionally. Two wheels in the air I parted the needle between a freezer truck, and then someone started putting hits on target on the bottom of the car.

The damn bullets spun it. None of that should have been possible. I did an axial seven twenty, went top first through a plate glass window, and entered a supermarket. The Crently almost made it around to wheels down, which would have been fantastic, but ended ninety degrees too soon. The cavalry came charging in, and I was already running.

Supermarket aisles aren't part of the structure. They're just flimsy metal and plastic, and easily traversed with proper determination. They split up the cavalry, and the horsemen caught up to me in singlets.

For the record, never throw jump-kicks. No one throws jump-kicks. They're an outdated, outmoded technique useful for balance and strength training, but completely useless in an actual fight. They got invented to take men off horseback, which isn't an issue in tournaments or getting mugged. 

So yeah, about that. I went arial and broke someone's chest unhorsing him. His mount went nuts. The next rider halted long enough to get a decent shot, and I caught him with 25 kgs of dog food. Guy number three started circling, flawlessly negotiating smashed produce, and horse numbed one reared, kicking with his forelocks. I knocked the horse out, and then threw his unconscious rider at guy number three.

For once I wasn't surprised. This made sense. I had Sandy's strength because fuck all if I knew, but I wasn't quibbling. Riders four and five were coming in as I made a door, and the great receiving door by the loading dock wasn't locked enough. A low wall took me to the roof, and I reversed direction to get to the front of the store. People were exiting the parking lot in a blind panic, and I hid in the bed of a pickup while angry cavalry guys and angrier infantry guys tried to stop half a hundred cars. Good luck with that. My pickup decided it didn't need roads, jumped medians onto a parkway, and exited.


	4. Chapter 4

4

Some miles out of town the truck slowed. Far ahead a roadblock was turning vehicles around. People would disembark their vehicles and argue, and the soldiers manning the roadblock shoved guns in their faces. There were dogs the size of ponies behind the roadblock as well, howling at the hills and moon. It seemed like a gathering for unfriendly people. My pickup began a three point turn, and on the second point, trailer hitch almost brushing thick rockwire, I disembarked and climbed. It was a long scramble upwards, not quite sheer, until I came to a dirty ledge. Half a dozen scrub pines grew almost out of the cliff face, and there were piles of goat droppings. I rested and waited.

The road ran along a creekside bounded by tall ridges, zigging and zagging almost instantly out of sight beyond the roadblock. If someone wanted to avoid being seen, that was a great place to be. It probably had nothing to do with me.

Forgive my cynical attempt at humor. Of course it was about me. It was all about me, so long as I was wearing Sandy's face, and they didn't mean me good. I gained the ridgeline and proceeded about twenty feet below it, sticking to trees and brush. 

Once past the roadblock, two bends put me above the main nest. They were building a hive. It looked like a grain silo, and was currently a dozen feet across. It seethed from this distance, rolling like boiling water, and men were piling vegetable matter nearby. The seething would absorb the vegetable matter like acid and flow back to the hive. I was too high to hear the buzzing and went further.

Around another bend was a command post and the first ridgeline outpost. There were a pair of guards with guns on detail, looking sinister, and as I got closer this effect got stronger. Finally I discerned it was the nature of their jaws. The cheekbones were higher and sharper than human, and they had too many teeth. Their eyes slanted down on the outside, sharply peaked by the tear ducts, and formed a droopy expression. They wore armor, but it was uneven and rolling, made of rivulets and creases, and looked biological. The guns, already mostly outside my experience, did not jive with anything I knew of design. Given my Sandy-strength, I considered jumping them, but had no idea what communication powers they wielded. Instead I crept past. 

They'd posted up in trucks along the roadway, all parked on the creek-side, with a walking path between the vehicles and the road. The biggest of the trucks had a roof covered in antennas and writing in a foreign language on the side. It was the only one with guards posted outside. I wedged myself between trees and waited. Night came quickly in the deep shadows, and road curvature broke up the sightlines. I used some trickery to get across, and underneath the command truck. It's rear was a box on wheels, and even with the engine running, I wormed my way upwards until I put an ear to the metal. 

"None of that made any sense," someone was arguing passionately. "If things can't cut, then there's no way a point should pierce. It's just a localized effect of the same principal."

"Captain Derwent, for the last time, you're thinking about this the wrong way. The world was chosen to be this way."

"I see what I see with my own eyes!"

"Yes, but you're not listening to me or your eyes. Captain, there isn't an underlying law of order here. You need to stop asserting that there are laws of physics to be understood. There is no reason to assume there are such laws, and I'm flat out telling you there aren't. There are aspects of effect that Tinath went looking for, and this is the place that has them. He wanted a place where blades don't work. This is it. Other effects are at worst malicious and at best unpredictable. Now if you argue with me about this again, I'll simply find someone else."

"So the whole world is just screwy and arbitrary?" Derwent sounded sarcastic.

"Yes, exactly that."

"But then-"

"Captain."

"Sir, I-"

"Captain."

"I'm not getting paid enough for this."

"That's something we can discuss when you are successful."

The captain was resigned when he spoke again, and his voice carried a weight of discontent. "We can't track him by any of the normal methods. Even the hounds are losing scent or hitting on false trails. It's problematic. The only thing that's gone well is our defeat of the Arrite Military, which followed the battle plan almost perfectly. We've got complete ground control and fire superiority, and negotiations with the government have been successful thus far. Electronic surveillance methods are applicable, but such things take time. My LO in charge of satellite systems tells me it will be days, possibly weeks, before he gets us true overhead surveillance."

"I find that delay problematic."

"Welcome to my world, sir. Our bug handlers are making better time of it, but that can't be hurried either. A hive assembly takes five days, and isn't operational until seven. We should be operational after that."

Well, I was convinced. I lowered myself, went around to the back, and waylaid the guard there. Then I rapped firmly on the door.

It opened a crack. "What-"

I yanked the door wide, dragging the opener out with it, and slammed it. He got sandwiched between the door and wall, and I yanked it wide again, letting him fall out. Inside there were two men drawing guns, firing bullets in slow motion, and I broke their jaws in the ensuing fracas. I rushed past and found the captain emerging from a booth, his sidearm drawn. I put him down fast. Then I ducked under the curtain and went in to confront-

-a television screen. There was a camera set up on top, and Vincent was watching.

"Evening," I greeted him. 

"Tinath, you're as omnipresent as a cockroach."

I had no idea what that was.

"And yet you're having so much trouble finding me. Good luck, twinkles." I saluted the screen and ran over the unconscious officers. There was no time to take one.

People were coming, and I went for the stream, crossing it and scaling the far side. They shot at me, but their firearms were ineffective here. I was beginning to understand. Then they released the dogs, and I had until the canines forged the stream. A great howling went up below, and the mad scramble became a race. 

I came to the ridgeline below a watching post I entered through a wall. In close combat the surprised guards had no chance. From there kols swept me upwards, towards the peaks, along pathways of bare stone. Feet hadn't beaten these paths, but relentless winds and cold winter. It was like running over broken concrete with cliffs on either side. Hounds gained the ridgeline behind me, and I kept running.

You can outrun dogs. It's bloody murder but not impossible. You just go like madness, uphill if you can, picking the nastiest terrain you can find. Their paws wear out eventually. Oh, they'll chase you on bloody paws, but the handlers stop them. I got a thousand meters up before that happened, tearing across broken ice now. The cold nipped my ears and elbows, and I kept ascending. They sent up aircraft, but rotary winged birds topped out below me. Fast movers came in from the north, but they were having problems with the peaks. Mountains make their own weather, they say, and these were making fog. I got off the ridgeline when they came, and descended, making time, crossing around the backside of a peak. It got dark, and I kept going, paradising down a couloir, then across a snow field, and upwards again. I didn't know how long I could keep going like this, in the dark, the altitude, and the cold, so it stood to reason they didn't either. I hit a saddle and a hail-storm. Mountains make their own weather. I ran through sleet. 

Something changed that night. Somewhere in the darkness and cold, some indefinable warmth froze in me. It was too cold to be angry, and I was too short of breath to curse. I was too tired to be tense. But some inner core of hostility froze solid, became denser than my other surface thoughts, and sank in the depths of my mind. It was very quiet and then it was gone, easy to forget about, and even easier to ignore. 

I ran across the saddle until the next peak jumped out of whiteness, and there sheltered under a stone. 

What would I do if I was Vincent? First, I wouldn't be anyplace easily found. I'd do what he did, and remain someplace far away, someplace safe, and contact my agents remotely. Secondly, I'd probably glass the place. Firebombs, orbital strikes, whatever. He'd done the first, and from his conversation with the captain, he had the capacity to do the second, but he had abstained. If his agents had engaged and overcome the Arryte military as mentioned, it was not because he was afraid to use power. Why then? I had no idea.

The problem was it could be some time related detail, he might not be capable of glassing the place yet, that would be resolved in a week or two. Then my best bet was to make time and distance, and hope to escape. Or it might be an inherent unwillingness or inability to do so, in which case I could hide and start seeking information. I thought about grabbing someone and beating it out of them, but I don't have the stomach to be a torturer. The information wouldn't be reliable anyway. That left stealth and deception, and that would require time preclusive to the kind of mad flight necessary if he was setting orbital bombardment up. I wondered if I was being naive in refusing to force someone to talk, and that would be ironic in retrospect. 

Assuming pragmatically Vincent wasn't going the orbital bombardment route, or anything equally excessive, where did that leave us? He would need to send ground troops into the mountains. He might use bees. I thought I was too high for bees, but who knew what his bees were capable of? They could also siege the mountains. There was nothing to eat up here, and he was gaining control of the lowlands. What even were his bees?


	5. Chapter 5

5

Morning sun burned away some fog, and I broke out of crusted snow under my rock. I'd thought long and hard overnight, perhaps obsessing would be a better word, but it kept me awake and alive. I couldn't hide forever. Vincent was either unavailable or unapproachable.

That left Sandy. For hours I'd thought impotent circles about finding him, considering it impossible, until I suddenly realized that Sandy couldn't have gone just anywhere. His face would cause him the same problems it caused me. More over, Sandy had no idea how my world operated. He couldn't go to ground like I did. He didn't know how to cook his own food, where to buy it, or anything. So he had to be hiding, and he had to be hiding in Arryn.

Or he could have left for wherever he'd come from, but that thought did me no good so I ignored it. 

I wanted to find him and get my mitts on him, especially now while I shared his man-killing strength. Right now we were about even, physically, and I was better trained, more experienced, and very irate.

I also wanted more of those type suppressors before I died. The two priorities were about even. Both could be satisfied in Arryn. I took off across the peaks. 

It was two days of brutal travel. I got my hands on a goat on the second day, half mad with hunger, and killing and eating it didn't bother me. That pleased me. Later I found roots, and that evening I started the descent. The whitecaps at my back, twisted and torturously cold, mirrored the whitecaps below my feet, waves on the distant ocean that beat warm and soothing against ivory shores. Palm trees and pineapple fields, criss-crossing roads between mansions and resorts, all nicely compressed between the mountains and the sea. There were troops moving down there. It took the whole night to get to Arryn's outskirts. In the city I slept under a dumpster. 

Signs of occupation were around, but faint. There were no roadblocks on the streets, no checkpoints, no sequestration between districts. Yet large vehicles rumbled by on patrol during the night, and several great hives were going up behind concrete walls. I knew a doctor of questionable legal character and acquired the drugs I needed without him ever seeing my face. He asked no questions. I dosed up, and tinges of nausea, just beginning, vanished within minutes. 

I checked McKain's, and Sandy wasn't there. Then I checked the Colonial Armaments, and Sandy wasn't there either. I thought for a while. Where could he go? He'd completely sequestered himself for over a year, doing nothing but training and sleeping. He probably didn't know anyplace in Arryn except the gym and the Colonial, except for my place and-

No. He couldn't.

No, it wasn't even possible. 

No one would be such a turd as to set me up as bait, take my place, take my apartment, live my life-

That son of a-

A religious epiphany of rage rose gently from the cold cockles of my heart and kissed me behind the ear. It was night again, after my first full day back in the city, and Arryn was quiet with repressed, tense silence. I stole through the streets, jumping rooftops, crawling through storm drains, and got to my building. My unit on the third floor was locked off, unless someone could jump a full storey, catch the ornamentation of the second floor windows, and sling themselves up from there. I landed on my balcony, peered through the sliding glass door, and saw myself in my sweats, watching my TV, sitting on my couch, eating my delivery from my favorite place. 

You god-awful-bag-

Practically, you can't kick in a sliding glass door. Well, you can, but don't. It's a horrible idea. I kicked in the wall and jumped the bastard.

He had about a heartbeat of serious confusion before I started hitting him. Head, chest, torso, head, body, my strikes landed with blinding, furious rage. It was a repeat of our first, streetside fight, but this time my arms had the power of pistons. I had to hold him by the off hand so every thunderous hit didn't send him flying off into distant walls. I kicked his feet out from under him and juggled him up until he was bouncing off my ceiling, cracking plaster and insulation. He slipped free of my grip with a final shot, a huge unnecessary windup that involved spinning and leaping and would never have connected if he wasn't falling from the ceiling into the path of my fist. It hit like the wrath of god. Lightning feared the hit I put on Sandy. He went through a wall, through furniture, through other apartments, and I came after him like a freight train. 

Sandy's counter-punch was stronger than anything I could imagine.

Oh my God, he was even stronger. I didn't have his strength. I had some of it, and what I did have, that freakish power I could barely understand, was a wan shadow of the real thing. 

We found each other by the noise of our passages through walls and rooms. He was ripping some family's living room apart in a blind rage when I burst through a vent shaft. I shot for a takedown, and he countered the way I'd taught him, and I bypassed that the way Gruapa had taught us both. He tried to post off a sofa, but it crumpled instantly. I put him on his back and he connected with a few jabs, but even Sandy couldn't put enough power behind them to break ribs. Not when I had a reflection of his own durability. Instead he tried to scramble out, and we flailed, writhing and searching for positional advantage, as the terrified occupants of the place ran. Things like chairs and lamps didn't even register as sprawling limbs wrecked furniture. I got side control, he broke it, almost made it to his feet, I yanked him down off his legs, and the next few minutes were an insane scramble of movement, short strikes, and biometrics. 

He was so strong he had the bad habit of going for joint locks, chokes, and finishing moves without attaining a dominant position. It was messed up because he was so strong it usually worked too. His supernatural strength allowed him to break the rules because there were some things the techniques assumed the other fighter couldn't do, like overcome your entire body with just a bicep. Sandy usually could.

But not against me, not now. I had nothing on him, but I was a league ahead of where I should have been. We were down, up, running and smashing through walls, in contact, down again, and finally locked together with his fingers seeking my neck and mine twisted around his arm. I got him down, put him at a disadvantage so even his apocalyptic hits were pale shades of their true horror, and we strove against each other in noisy, gasping silence.

From the beginning there had been no discussion. His techniques testified his identity better than his face, now my face, could, and his mannerisms were known to me like a profile. Likewise my intentions weren't exactly subtle. We'd come to a full stop, a glacial pause where strength and leverage contended in almost perfect balance. His nails were creeping, millimeters a minute, towards my throat while I tried to break his arm, and it would take us nearly forever to resolve the conflict. Then it would be over, and one of us was going to die.

Vincent threw a fireball through a wall and blew us up. 

Little bastard.


	6. Chapter 6

6

The world was burning. Vincent's fire had transcended trivial limitations like flammability and set the world alight. Stones blazed. The air smoldered. Clouds of seething embers self-sustained, lit up the cratered ground beneath us and began to climb. A couple of steam pipes from the boilers had burst, and even the cloud of fog was lit. 

Disoriented I fell out of a wall. The entire building was gone, ripped apart, and the remnants were cackling in red and orange. I staggered out of some shadows that were themselves alight and couldn't understand it. I kept looking. My shoulders stung, and I slapped at the heat. There was some rubble before me.

"Got you." Sandy was gloating with my face. 

"What?" demanded Vincent, who I could see now. He was bound in flames, manacles of the blaze, and held against the sky.

"Had to get my hands on you somehow. Welcome to my trap. Want to live?"

Vincent was quiet, straining against his shackles, and I started creeping. I moved slowly, laying each foot carefully, came around the rubble and saw my own back. I was facing away from myself.

Sandy reached out, snapped, and the gravity of a dozen worlds reached up from below. I ate dirt, struggled to rise and failed, and would have died if I hadn't gone limp.

"I repeat myself, because you probably thought I was going to be caught off guard. Almost insulting, Vinny. Do you want to live?"

"Of course."

"Good. I've been thinking about old Corwin, and the way he didn't kill Julian when he had a chance. Honestly, it baffled me for a long time. Had he turned into a melodrama villain, unable to pull the trigger when he should? Unlikely. Corwin won in the end and knew when to give it up to get what he really wanted, so he wasn't stupid. But why didn't he just put Julian over the edge when he had the chance? It would have saved him some bleeding later.

"It sounded stupid, but Corwin wasn't stupid, and I think I figured it out. Corwin didn't want to get cursed. Julian's dying words would have been a hate beyond the grave, full of the power of an Amberite, wrapped and tempered by Dworkin's lore, the unicorn's blood, Oberon's parentage. We tend to think of murder as finishing a problem, but do you remember all the problems we had after the Patternfall war? Corwin survived his curse, and that opened the avenue to the Courts coming in a full invasion. King Eric died for his, and that, more than their silly heroics, saved Amber. Oh, we all threaten with curses, but I've come to believe those aren't empty threats. Complacency has just rendered us numb.

"So Vinny, you don't mind if I call you Vinny do you? I will anyway, so it doesn't matter. Vinny, I'm going to let you live. And it's probably going to bite me later, but if it was smart enough for old Corey, well it's probably smart enough for me. But I'm not going to let you stop me. I'm brave, not stupid.

"That guy wearing my skin was bait. You got suckered, sucker, and this whole shadow was the trap. Oh, I had business here. I needed to learn fighting. I've always been a little strong on the cerebral end but weak of bicep and I needed to fix that. Especially for what is to come. But that's only a third of the game. The middle third is this shadow was one of my greatest experiments. I mean, blades don't work here! Do you think anyone could twist a shadow that way this close to Amber? Hah! Do you realize what a work of art you bumbled into? It was a disposable masterpiece. I learned so much, you don't even understand.

"But the final third, the real art, is that slobbering fool wheezing behind me. Not gravity, that's not that tricky. You could learn it in a dozen years or so. No, his power. That jackass was good enough to train me at hand to hand fighting. He was strong enough to force me to learn. He was a meaningless, weak, nothing shadow until I got my hooks into this whole shadow and lifted it like a gentle god. I pulled this place almost to heaven, shaped it, carved it, and filled it with blood and sweat. Worked blood and sweat. You wouldn't understand; you don't have the will. 

"But it's over now, and you set it on fire. The underpinnings are burning. Chaos powered sorcery this close to Amber, Vinny? Really? You thought that was a good idea? Sucker. Arryn is about to fall, physically, down from the heights of power I dragged it to, and it's going to chuck you through shadow. Don't worry, I've you covered. You won't die. But you're not going to be calling anyone. You aren't going to be walking out of there. You, Vin, are stuck.

"Strain, Vinny-boyo. Reach for it. Reach- Oh, I bet it's so close you can taste it. Can you taste it, like electrified sugar on the tips of your lips? Reach, V-Money. Reach.

"No? Sigh. Almost like I prepped this place for it. Toodle-loo, V-ster. But don't worry. I spun time just right. It won't be a day until you're free; don't want you getting enough despair to really build up the hate for a curse after all, and then I'll have won, and you, Little V, will, well, I just don't give a shit. Goodbye, Velma."

Sandy snapped his fingers, and the world broke. Frayed from Vincent's magic, the world sang into pieces. The sky shot into the infinite distance, and the ground dropped out, going translucent. Air, space, and time all shot out into a million different directions. Sandy stood motionless in the center, the only stable thing in the world, and knocked us all away from him like perfect pool shots. Vincent went flying, safely shackled, and his departure traced a white arc past Thursday and was gone in the direction of the difference between three and blue. 

I, well, no one cared about me. I went in the other direction and fell into darkness. 

Dramatically, 'Then I died' would be an awesome next line. I'm extremely pleased we won't be going that route.

When I saw the following events were indescribable, I mean the phenomenons were beyond my mind and language. I couldn't process it then, and now the details are faded like I couldn't believe they ever would. At best I had a crude, tangential grip on things at the time, like a lobster holding a wrench. They should have sent a poet, but the individual doing the sending didn't care.

Objectively, again using terminology I didn't know at the time, I got kicked out through shadow. We were so close to Amber I passed it, a vague complex of perceptions and natures that meant nothing to me, and I fell out the other side. I skimmed over worlds like a round stone on tiny ripples in a lake, bounding over the great pole of the world, and onwards to the distant bank. I didn't get there of course, but I certainly wasn't close to anyplace else when my shadow-skipping stone bounced the last time and sank.

I ate dirt, and it tasted like sulfur and wrath. Everything hurt. People were screaming around me.

I got up, and someone tried to take my head off with a bent axe. Two armies, one of men in white and blue, one of beasts in black and red, were doing war on each other, feral, berserk war, wherein no quarter was asked or given. This was the last stand of men, the pendency of their utter annihilation, and humandom was ringed about the children, men and women shoulder to shoulder against the horde. This was the end. The clock was ticking the tock before midnight.

I was so God-dammed happy. Let me explain something to you. At this moment I had serious latent hostility. My jimmies were rustled. Gently frustrated was no longer the applicable term. And this individual, this beast on two legs, scarlet and black of helm and cuirass, was trying to kill me with a weapon I could block, break, and reach through to punch his teeth down his throat. I had no questions, there were no meaningful answers, and no moral uncertainty about courses of action was necessary. I just had to beat every son of a bitch that got in front of me until the race of men survived. Hit people until they stop coming. 

Ladies and gentlemen, that day I did work. 

Hours later the blood-dimmed tide halted before the race of men, and I was there. When the sun set and the yrch fought in the dark, my face glowed to their heat sensitive eyes. When the sun rose on a world too exhausted to fight, when the grass burned, when the salt rains fell, I was one filthy, wet, furious engine of violence. At noon, the weakest time for yrch, they sent up a barking cry of panic and fear. Their spirit broken, the press stopped, and the yrch fled before us. They gibbered and ran, dropping armor and swords, shields, weapons in their mad haste to escape. There was nothing but panic and despair. We saw their fleeing backs and did not believe it, for too much time had passed.

I climbed down my mound and approached the remnant who lived. They were gaunt with grief, exhausted, weary of life and killing, and looking out of depths of despair. I picked up someone who had fallen and put him on his feet. The Queen of Men, tall, dark skinned, blood stained and bleeding, approached me and asked something in awe. Of course I didn't understand her.

"Roland," I said, tapping my chest. "Roland."

"Roland," she repeated and welcomed me. 

I accepted. Who else was going to teach me what I could eat?


	7. Chapter 7

7

The years after that were grim. Humanity had been driven from its lands and pushed to the edge of extinction. Yrch attempted to succeed many times. We fled to the sea and found a land of dense trees bordered by two fingers of mountains. The shore was a line of sharp cliffs. Even had we known how to make ships, we could not. Queen Merilar ordered her people to settle there. This was to be another last stand, like the one I had interrupted, but it was a stand of farming and game tending. There was no place to flee, and winter was only so far away. 

The people farmed, the yrch came, and I fought the yrch. I learned how weapons worked, blades, bows, axes, virtually all of the means one can use, and I learned battle as well as fighting. I fought in skin, then leather, and then iron when Merilar's liegemen sank mines into the hills. I learned of warfare and deceit. I wooed Merilar and lost when she turned from me for no reason I could understand. Then I went back to the Path of Final Desperation, the great valley between peaks that was the only way into the Vale of Merilar, and stood against the yrch. The seasons rolled by. Merilar died of old age and on her deathbed forgot my name. 

I was getting older but not as other men do. I wore a year for every five, and when the last survivor of Glen Herrin Falls, the battle of my arrival, had passed into the land beyond, I was maybe fifteen years older in form. I'd grown in strength and power, not like Sandy and Vincent, but as one might expect of that many years of hard living and physical labor. But I was also nearing the end of my prime. Winters had just started to hurt in my bones. I was greedy for time, but there was no one to complain to. I'd already been showered in more than my share of largesse.

It was autumn, and the Path of Final Desperation, now called White Wall Vale, was turning orange and gold. Trees wore their most colorful gowns. I had returned from a long, extended patrol of the lands beyond. Several years ago we'd gone forth and crushed the yrch fortress-temples. They had fled and not returned. Still I circled outside, for I was uncomfortable among men. I had once tried to take a wife, but we'd had no children. She'd passed recently with nine children from a good man. We hadn't spoken in years. 

 

My tower was stone to the height of a man, and then oak to the level of the trees. There wasn't much in there: some money they gave me from time to time, weapons and armor for varying tasks, and tools to maintain them. I had a bed, clothes, and a chamber pot. There was a firepit in a lower level where the walls were still made of stone. I sat on a stump and sighed, feeling my age. Then I unlatched the cuirass and swordbelt, removed the heavy helm, and took of the greaves and half my leg hair with them. That's something they don't warn you about. Frustrated I rubbed my head in my hands, and when I was done, some of my beard had come out.

It was time for another pill. The drugs that doctor in vanished Arryn had given me still worked. In fact, they worked better. I took one or two a decade and expected my supply to outlive even me. I trooped down to the level of the fireplace and swept the coals out, long cold from before I had departed. The stone was big, the weight of a man, and offered no easy grip. That was why I'd picked it. Grunting and grumbling I got it up and for some reason, a sudden, intense premonition of loss left me sweating. I was sure it would be gone. It wasn't. I took a pill, swallowed it, and then someone shot me in the back of the head.

Short bow, horn, from a range of at least thirty paces to put them beyond the screen of the trees. The arrowhead broke on impact but certainly knocked me loopy. Four of them came through the door, and we had a mad, violent fight I would have won without the concussion. Then they were gone, and I was so very confused I fell asleep. 

Even after waking up I lost precious time. God, that hurt. I had no idea what was going on, and I came to lying in my sink. Basin, not sink. It didn't have a drain. I fell onto the floor, got up, fell over again, and sat around for a timeless period like a moron. What were all these things? It was after dark when I started putting the pieces together. Then it was late, and I needed restful sleep, not the blunt hammer of unconsciousness. Daylight came soon enough.

So it was almost a full day before I set out after them. Tracks of recent ash lead from my tower westward, towards the Vale of Merilar. 

The Gates of Dawn opened for me to pass in the sunset direction. The guards saluted me but didn't speak. Between two immense shoulders of mountain stretched the lean wall of Merilar, uncompleted in her time, and still only a third of the height planned. It was five meters thick and only three tall, a solid pedestal of stone. Inside were a cluster of houses like a village for wood-choppers, farmers with lands beyond the wall, and others who passed that way but slept inside. I went beyond them and searched until I found signs of passage. People who noticed me gave me a wide berth.

Eventually the trail came to the outskirts of Vo-Done, Merilar's city. It was named for her husband. The stone of the Finger Mountains was white granite, pure as the high snows, and the walls of Vo-Done were like diamond. Still in the morning it was wreathed in orange of sunrise, fading into whiteness as we would come to noon. I ringed Vo-Done carefully and found no tracks beyond the city. My robbers had gone in.

At the gatehouse I sent message to the royals I was tracking someone and would come to the palace formally later. Then I canvassed the roads, up and down, and found nothing. 

Queen Lolimer met me on the streets with her bodyguards when I didn't come to formally appear. I was bent over, sniffing some ash, and frustrated because it was hickory, not oak, and when I stood up there she was in all her glory. She was past the beauty of youth and into the dignity of adulthood. She was confident and poised, graceful, but cares wore heavily on her. They had given her eyes depth, like her mother's. I saw Merilar in her face and the way she held her head. I wasn't given to bowing, but I nodded.

"Your majesty," I said respectfully.

"Roland of Glen Herrin Falls, welcome to Vo-Done. You know you are always welcome here, only asked to visit our house when you come." Her chiding was diplomatic, subtle. For her it was bloody obvious, but that's a court thing. I don't spend time there.

"I'm following tracks that are already cold. Time is everything now."

"Then allow us to help you. We've been in Vo-Done for some time, so we were here when they trail you're following was hot."

People had stopped to see this. Queen Lolimer didn't appear often on the streets, not flanked by guards and seneschals. They wore the finest the people could make, and her raiment was freely given. The highest honor of a seamstress could attain was seeing the queen wearing her clothes. It nearly ensured good business for the next month. I was confronting the great courtly mass of them, outnumbered and outgunned.

"Some men broke into my tower and robbed me. They stole something of mine. I've followed them here." 

"Then they must have come through the Gates of Dawn. Tell us when, and we will have the guards brought us. We will help you search."

I tried to think of a way out of that, but I didn't have one. I had no tracks and no leads, no description, no destination. There were five of them, average sized, all men. One had a limp I'd probably given him. So some guys, one limping, in a city. That narrowed it right down. 

"How can I refuse? I am your majesty's servant," I replied.

Her court formed up around us like they wanted to be sure I didn't run. The walk to the palace was short, Vo-Done being a sapling of a city, and we had time to say little during the walk. She asked about my health. I asked about hers, complimented the city and herself, and she took it gracefully. Her great hall was open and light, with high arched windows underneath the eaves to refresh the air. She settled me at her right hand without giving me the opportunity to escape and sent out messengers to wall. 

"They will come directly, but there will be some time. Tell of yourself, and what you've done in your absence," the queen directed me. 

"I've been in the Woden Wood beyond the Final Desperation," said, referring to the intermingled mores and forests outside the valley. "Sometimes the yrch come there, and I plague them. Two raiding parties came last year, or the year before, and I haunted them from the River of Crushing Thunder to the very edges of Little Hills before they turned aside. Just work, your majesty."

"We had not known the yrch still come to the edges of the White Wall Vale," she said. She was too poised to be taken aback. "They suffered harsh defeat under Queen Merilar's rules."

"Yes, I was there. But your mother's been dead for a long time now. The yrch probe."

"She has been, but I spoke of Queen Merilar." Lolimer looked at me curiously, turning her head.

"Yes," I said slowly, wondering what would come from this new direction of attack.

"Queen Merilar was my grandmother," Lolimer explained very cautiously. "Her son, my father, was King Gormen, who ruled with honor." She paused, then said very clearly. "For forty years. He's been dead a decade now."

"What?" I asked disbelievingly. 

"Sir Roland-" People kept trying to make me a sir. "Queen Merilar was my grandmother. She died long before I was born." She didn't realize she dropped the royal 'we,' and I didn't either. 

"No," I argued softly. "No, it could not have been so long."

"Sir Roland, you've been gone from Vo-Done for over fifty years."

"No, not so long. Ten, twenty at the most. Not fifty."

"Sir Roland, yes. We hear of you. Our rangers bring us reports and tell me that without fail a messenger heads to your tower to invite you to Midsummer and the Harvest Festival."

I looked away from her because I didn't believe what she was saying. Her court was listening while pretending not to, but I caught someone before he could glance away and transfixed him. He met my eyes for a moment before being compelled to speak.

"I am Meryn of the Outer Gates, Sir Roland, inherited from my father and his father before him. We send the invitation twice a year, and for years now there's been no one at your tower to accept it."

I looked away because I couldn't meet his gaze. It wasn't possible. My last patrol had been long, but only a few seasons. I had wintered in a bear cave eastward in the Woden Wood, but that was all. I'd been home before that. In fact I'd been home in the autumn immediately before because I'd left, found the bear cave-

Someone had brought us all wine, but I didn't drink. I didn't move. I was remembering that yes, I had gone to the bear cave from my tower, but then I'd left that cave, gone east and then north, found yrch in the upper highlands and harried them for months, wintering in the mountain fastnesses where the biting snows were too cold even for yrch. Then I'd gone further east, and a summer, winter, and another summer had passed while I learned the lay of mountains without a name, huge tree-clad peaks that were not so tall, but broad and green. Taking inventory of my time in silence I found more seasons and years until I was back to the bear cave in the west.

"You're not Merilar's daughter. You're her granddaughter?" I asked, knowing she had already answered.

"Yes, Sir Roland."

I shook my head, trying to straighten my mind with what they told me of the years. Perhaps time moved different in this place. "You have the look of her about you. You've got her grace. It is easy to take you for her daughter."

"Queen Merilar was known as a great beauty. We're honored you say so," the queen replied.

"She was. You have that in you as well." 

Lolimer flushed like a girl flattered by an old relative, which I guess was close. She asked about my patrols, but I shrugged her off. It was all blood and guts, not things she needed to hear about. "The yrch come and go. I'm pleased they haven't bothered Vo-Done in a while."

She asked a few other questions, but I didn't give her the conversation she sought. Instead I redirected her towards the city and towns, and she spoke at length. I listened and drank, and tried to fit my memories to what she said. 'And so and so fields were plowed, but it took us three years to do it,' she would say, and those three years could have been anything, passed like rain. The ground was dry now, but there were plants everywhere I couldn't remember sprouting.


	8. Chapter 8

8

When the gate guards came they were intimidated by queen and court, but intelligent and proficient about their work. We discerned that the robbers must have passed the gatehouse before the evening crowd of hunters and wood cutters, but when there was still regular traffic. A few groups could have been them, but one seemed particularly poorly abused. They'd been in a bad fight.

Vo-Done's guards were equally bright and collaborated, saying a similar group had entered the city. We pressed them closely, but they insisted that party had not left. 

"Would you like dogs, Sir Roland?" asked someone, a viscount named Arbiers, from the sidelines.

I gave him crazy eyes, never having thought of that.

"Hunting dogs, sir," he clarified. "Hounds. I have some very decent trackers in my kennels."

"Yes. Dogs. And a handler."

"Of course. We can have them ready by dawn."

He got more crazy eyes.

"Or I can have them ready tonight," he reconsidered.

"I'll join your messenger, just to save time."

Arbiers' lands were outside Vo-Done, westward near the sea. Deep forests under the eaves of the mountains entrenched the hillside and marched down to the very edge of the cliffs. Arbiers had a great log hall, build years ago, and was constantly improving it, swapping rough beams out for neatly planed ones, hiring carvers to work his doorways. Around back sat the kennels, and you could hear and smell them from the front. His best handler, a lithe woman with short hair and fleas, selected half a dozen trackers, and we returned to Vo-Done by sunset. 

"Do you want to wait until morning?" she asked like Arbiers had. Her name was Yve. 

"No. Why?"

"Things in the dark."

"Lady, I'm the thing in the dark."

"What about other things in the dark?"

"They're in the dark because they're hiding from me."

Finding this discussion untenable, she put the dogs to work.

We didn't have much to go on. Travelling as far as my tower to get the scent and returning was implausible, so first we put the dogs on me and then sent them out. This confused the little mongrels. They kept sniffing around then coming back to hit on my feet, and I could read the thoughts on their little furry faces. 'He's right here. What are you asking?' I sympathised, but they smelled terrible. Also, fleas. So many fleas. We pushed the dogs to keep looking. 

We trooped up and down Vo-Done, pushing a tired and steadily more confused pack, until suddenly one dog startled on something and lost his little canine mind. He went ballistic, howling and barking, and shot down down a side road. Like a switch was flipped the other dogs erupted behind him. Then we ran to keep up, for they moved like little missiles. Unerringly they rounded on a wide door by the keep's east gate, and jumped and pawed at it, their tails wagging so hard they knocked each other over.

"Wait here," I instructed Yve. "I'll knock."

I did. I knocked with my foot, taking the door off its hinges, but then it was open so they must have wanted me to come in. The dogs went for the root cellar, and I followed them. Yve followed me, but she didn't look happy. 

What we found in the basement, eight legs, built like a wooly mammoth, tusks, teeth, and spines, was the sort of thing to make being scared of the dark reasonable. The dogs hit on a door, and it broke out, roaring, in a sharp voice of many layered tones. It was deep, shrill, piercing, and flat all at the same time. The dogs went from barking to yelping and fled back onto the streets. I went after the monster and got my hands on it so the shaggy multi-legged spider-bastard couldn't get away. By the time it realized the error of starting that fight I was finishing it, and the house came down on our shoulders. Then I dragged the body up onto the street, where the neighbors were watching out their windows, scared.

"Don't anybody touch that!" I yelled and went back into the rubble. 

There was a hole, like a well, that went down into darkness. Its walls were lined with red markings, hot to the touch, that smelled of burning wood and on the sill was an tope anchor with no rope. 

"Are you going-" asked Yve when I jumped.

Tumbling and sliding, bouncing from wall, kicking out and skidding down, I made it to the bottom in a rockslide, and rune-bearing rocks, scarlet and broken, tumbled down around me in a pile. I used one like a torch. The passageway down here was dank and old, suspiciously so in a city as new as Vo-Done, but a new coil of rope lay jumbled by the entrance. Someone had pulled it down after them. I tossed one end up and told Yve to tie it off before I went hunting. 

I was comfortably enraged, and the inflamed red corridor under Vo-Done was the perfect place for it. It was a deep arterial red, lit from runes in the ground and walls, hot, and damp. Generally moving north, it did not go straight as a plumber's line, but wove crookedly about a direction. It was like a drunk's walk, erratic, but closing on some distant point. The Crently could have fit down these passages, and if the woolly spider of before had living relatives, they'd be comfortable. Maybe they were lying in wait. I hoped they were. I wanted its kith and kin to lay an ambush. God, I was mad. My fingers spasmed into fists as I walked. 

There was a dip and a hill in succession, and just before the crest of the hill I caught whispered voices. Several people, four or five, were talking in the middle of the passage several hundred meters from me. Their voices were low but echoes carried hints of their words. I thought about it, then tensed and sprang.

Running on toes I got within fifty meters of them before they noticed, and a sudden babble of yelps and screams burst forth. Two went for swords, and another two ran around to a last one, who was sitting against a wall. They all shouted at each other, and I was within twenty meters now, roaring like a bull.

One in front stepped forward, put his hands up, and cried, "Please don't hurt me."

That confused me, but I switched targets to the next. He threw his hands up too, shouting 'please!' and then they were all in the scarecrow position. Even the one on the ground put his hands up. He hissed bitterly a moment later, and lowered one to his hip, but rolled onto his side with his palms skyward. I was almost at the first of them now, and he was wincing, gritting his teeth and bracing for it. 

I slowed to a trot, then a walk, and realized I'd chambered both fists in front of my head. It was like normal pistoning of the arms in flight, but I knew what I was doing. I stopped entirely, waiting, and they all waited as well.

"We don't have your thing," one in the back said.

"You can search us," another agreed.

"I will. Drop your weapons. Carefully."

They did and piled them up. I urged them away, and pointed at the one on the ground. "What's wrong with him?"

"You broke his hip. He was running on it until here, and it finally gave out on him."

That was the first one to raise his hands. He still had his hands up before his face, like he was ready to ward off my punches. He had no idea how hard my punches were, and the background snarl of 'hit him, hit him,' made his impotent defensive gesture infuriating. It was like he disrespected what I could do by thinking he could stop me. I nearly went off on him right there, but somehow he guessed and shrank, scared, forearms in an X over his face. I paused on the balls of my feet.

"I'm going to search you one at a time. Those who have been searched stand over there. You're first so-" I stopped, and thought of something. "You'll notice that at some point, you're going to surround me. Maybe you'll run, thinking I can't chase you down in both directions. Maybe you'll fight, because some of you will have a shot at my back. Maybe both. 

"God help whichever of you I have my hands on at the time. God help the broken one, because he can't run. And may your gods have mercy on you if I have to chase you."

"Can I ask something?" said one, hands higher than the rest.

"What?"

"Can I ask how you got past the shoggoth?"

"The what?"

"The shoggoth, the thing by the well."

"Oh, the hairy thing with all the legs? It had a really bad day."

Their eyes widened and everyone, even the one on the ground, drew back. 

"How?" asked the one who had asked before. "Its claws are poison, its legs are legion, its-"

"It had a really bad day," I interrupted hostilely. 

"And you think we're going to jump you?" asked another in a tone of stark disbelief. "Underground where we can't get away?"

"You could be thinking about it."

 

They all looked at each other, and then one retorted, "No. No, we're not. No one's thinking about it." Their hands strained towards the ceiling. 

This could have been an elaborate psychological trap. The monster lies in wait, pretending to be injured, so when the hero checks to be sure the monster can grab him. The worst mistake the hero does is always touching the monster, and I was about to do the same when I searched them. The background hiss of fury tightened to a high whine, an engine screaming at the redline.

I pulled the first aside and frisked him. I was fast, thorough, and invasive but he had nothing. Then I put him behind me and checked the next. I kept glancing at the weapon pile. The next two were clean as well, and I turned to the broken one. He was obviously hurt and scared, but I didn't have a whole lot of sympathy. If I'd broken his hip it was because he attacked me in my home after shooting me in the head. His hip was his own damn fault. But he didn't have my medicine either.

I think one of them was thinking about it, because he kept nodding his head towards the weapon pile. I think the others thought he was an idiot, because they kept shaking their heads 'no' and refusing to meet his eyes. I watched his feet out of the corner of my eye, just waiting for him to step towards the pile. He didn't. Finally, after I'd checked all the others, I walked up to him, got about a centimeter from his face, and asked, "Yeah?"

"Nope!" he replied and kept his hands where I could see them. 

"You sure?"

"Just standing here," he announced.

In spite of everything, I let my guard down a little. It was almost a trap. No one took the bait. I told them to sit down and explain things to me.


	9. Chapter 9

9

"Do you know you have a religion devoted to you?" asked Motin. Motin was not the one looking at me sideways, thinking about it. That was Dimine, and Motin would not meet his eyes. Motin was cleaner, wearing white robes that had always been clothes. He most wanted to turn my anger, and the others but Dimine looked to him for guidance.

"The Angel Roland, they call you," he continued. "An Angel of Wrath. It is said you fell from the sky over Glen Herrin Falls wreathed in flame. It is said your fury smashes trees.

"I was a part of it," Motin admitted. "We were. King Gormen put us down. It was before my time. You were a threat to his reign. You see, if you were an angel, sent of the divine, Queen Merilar erred mightily when she declined your proposal. Indeed the King should have had a different father, you, and the marriage of his parents was a mistake. Perhaps the king should not even have existed. It is noted that you, called Angel Roland, fathered no children with Celeste, who gave Huggard nine children. That theory had been before said, and after King Gormen put us down, set the dogs on us, we bore him no love.

"If you didn't know that, and I see you don't, then you cannot know we are old enough to have our own apostasy. We have a heretic. He was Calcedony Moor, one of the anchors of the faith. His name was Pisis --Chalcedony Moor is a title like bishop-- You don't know the names and titles of your own church. I can see it in your eyes. I can see that in your eyes. On my life, truth is the greatest heresy. I'm honor bound to tell them, but they won't welcome it."

Motin struggled to talk, and I glanced around. One of them might be having a religious epiphany, but the others were just nervous. He on the ground didn't look didn't look religious. He looked like someone had just broken his hip. Dimine wasn't. I had no idea what Dimine was thinking, his face inscrutable. 

"I don't know what to say," Motin blurted. "It's not unreasonable. You appeared out of nowhere and slew our enemies. You have the strength of ten men. You don't age. Hells, and to the point- Are you? Are you an angel, Roland?"

"No."

"No-?" Motin waited. His head and shoulders leaned forward, and he reached for more answer.

"No," I repeated.

"No, you-?" He held out waiting then sighed. He shrank. "No, what? I feel like you're leaving the crux of the answer unsaid. No, what? Are you an angel or not?" he demanded, speaking fast and agitated. 

"No," I said again.

"No, you're not an angel-" He held out hope for more but suddenly realized he'd completed the sentence. He realized he couldn't keep hoping that wasn't the real answer. "No, you're not an angel. No, you live forever, fight like a bear, but you aren't an angel. ,No, just that."

"Yes," I said.

"Of course." He sighed and shrank more. A moment later he started talking again but like he dragged his words across broken glass.

"You have a church," he said like it should mean something and didn't. ""Pisis was in it. He said you're just a man with a strength potion. He said every few years you took it and it kept you young."

"That's-" I paused on the verge of arguin. My spit tasted bitter when I swallowed. "That's not precisely wrong untrue, but it isn't like that. It's not a strength or youth potion." I stopped, biting on a word.

Motin was hanging on my words, getting the expansion he wanted. Dimine was afraid of whatever I would say. Root, the one in the epiphany, looked like Motin, but the other two still looked suspicious. They would die before I learned their names. The last one, Huggard with the broken hip, named for my ex-wife's other husband, couldn't believe any of it. He didn't believe the story of Motin's religion, but he couldn't believe he was here, that I was here, that his hip was broken. He was spiritually defeated and his leg hurt like hell.

"There's a poison in me," I explained, translating. "It's in my face and arms. It's killing me. That potion is another poison to kill the first one. It kills it for a few years, and while it's dead, the first one makes me strong. If it isn't killing me, it's keeping me alive. You saw me take the second poison.

"It isn't a potion!" I yelled, trying to make them understand. "It's just a different poison, strong enough to kill the first one for a few years. The first one makes me the things you think I am, but if you take it, either, you will die!"

"Then we are all dead," whispered Root.

"No," I said, but it wasn't the terse, aggressively brief 'no' of before. It was almost pleading. 

"We all did," Dimine said. "We thought it made you an angel. We wanted to be gods."

"But you won't be angels. It's a poison. It will kill whatever makes you well. But it's not the poison that will kill you. It's something else. You'll get a cough or a cut, and you would shrug it off before. This time you'll die."

"That's not what Pisis told us," Motin replied. "He said something else, and we believed him."

What was I to say to that? They'd all taken a death sentence. I wanted to argue it was worse than that, that it was so bad they never should have taken it in the first place. But they already had. What could we do? They were all going to die, and between them, they'd taken twenty five to fifty years of my life. 

"Who were you taking the pills to? Pisis?" They didn't have a word for pills, so I called it a bottle of potion-rocks.

"Yes."

"Is he up ahead?"

"Yes."

"Then I have nothing else for you. You're all going to die. Soon. I'm honestly sorry. I'm not going to kill you, so you're free to go." I paused. "Except for that one."

I pointed at Dimine. "He looks like he wants a title shot." Title-shot in my home language, but they understood. "You want it? You want to find out you don't have my strength, and Pisis gave you a lie?"

"My god," whispered Motin, and I hoped he didn't mean me. "You think he wants to fight you?"

"He's been eyeballing me," I grumbled.

"He wants to worship you!" screamed Motin and threw himself into the air. "He's a fanatic! You are his King! He was sent so if any of us had second thoughts, he would take care of us!"

I didn't believe that. I couldn't. I looked at Dimine's impenetrable expression and wanted to look around for confirmation. Yet his face suddenly made perfect sense. He couldn't understand anything as completely as Huggard but didn't have the pain to distract him. He was a thousand miles from comprehension, and I was dumping everything on him.

"Do you want to come?" I demanded. Who were these people to ask me for any of this. I did nothing but help, and they attacked me out of faith. How could any religion get that screwed up-- My God, that's exactly what happened. People kill in the name of 'Do not kill' all the time. Of course they would break into heaven and fight an angel for immortality. Faith just meant they believed it would work.

"Yes!" screamed Root, his first word so far."

"Oh. Well, come along then."

"What about me?" asked Huggard. I think he expected a miracle cure.

"We can carry you," I offered.

They were all coming. It wasn't in question. They didn't say it, but their body language did. Their readiness said it. We fashioned a strap sling for Huggard and went on. 

 

We made light conversation. Imagine talking to your god to fill empty space. Imagine talking to someone who thought you were a god, and both of you trying to cover a silence. Motin walked at my side, Root behind, and the doomed twins carrying Huggard behind him. Dimine brought up the rear. That made me uncomfortable. I couldn't forget the madness in his eyes. I didn't want him at my back but didn't want him ahead either. Finally I put as many people between us as I could.

Uncomfortable thing not to be talked about: imminent death. I asked about the tunnels.

"We don't know who made them," Motin said. "They were in use before I was in the faith, probably before I was born. They might have been made to escape King Gormen."

"That's a lot of tunnelling in a few years," I noted.

"Yes," agreed Motin. He was grasping at sanity's threads. Looking at me burned his eyes like the sun, but he couldn't look away. "It was."

I turned from him and watched my footing.

We came upon another shoggoth in a place where the tunnel widened. It was laying in wait on the ceiling but fumbled the pounce. We dove back to safety.

"Stay back. I'm going to kill it," I ordered and looked into eyes wide as dinner plates.

"Like that?" confirmed Motin.

"Yeah," I grunted, embarrassed. Hunching my shoulders against them, I went forward to fight. It didn't go like that.

The shoggoth pounced again, but I blocked, cleared it with a body strike, then circled. It chittered, feinted, twisted then came. I dodged. We circled.

It had been a trap. The shoggoth was supposed to miss the first leap. That way it had all our attention. Another broke out of a false ceiling behind, got two, and went for Huggard. Dimine had come forward to watch, but before the screams got going he had turned again. Two of the shoggoth's limbs were brutal, man-killing pincers that served no purpose in the wild. They existed solely to kill men. The guys I won't learn the names of died in its grip first, crushed in half. Their torsos lived on for a couple seconds, long enough to scream, and that's what prior warning we had. Dimine went for it, hoping to die. 

I panicked. I've never had fear like that, that fear when I saw them die. I went insane, babbling, and flying kneed the shoggoth. I knocked the thing into the wall, closed, and just started hitting it. This wasn't fighting; this was bag work. This was do as much damage as you conceivably can before your muscles gas, Roland, and then take two in the waiting tank. This was Graupa coming over to teach himself, back when he still did. This was before Sandy, before the face, before Vincent, before I lost my entire world. He killed my entire world. Sandy ended my world. He was our apocalypse. He killed everything, everyone, every child, every dog, the trees, the sky, the rocks. And for what? Vincent. Because Vincent was annoying him. He killed my world because someone annoyed him.

Then there was screaming behind me, and I came back.

Dimine had lost a hand; the shoggoth had it. Dimine was hitting it with his stump. Huggard was crawling away, and Motin still had his weapons. He was fighting, landing good shots while the shoggoth flailed and stabbed Dimine. I stepped through and hit it like the fall of angels. That was when the shoggoth fled, and we watched it go, panting. 

"I lost my arm, Angel Rolands." Dimine whispered. "It took my arm."

Oh God, the panic came back. I had my belt off and cinched around his stump almost instantly, but he was down. His skin was going white. We stopped the bleeding, but his lips were blue. His breaths were fast and shallow.

"The shoggoth is poison," Motin said.

"Yeah, or his artery could have retracted." I eyed tourniqueting his upper arm. More arm might have to come off, up above the elbow.

"No, Sir Roland, see how he is cut on the gut and legs."

"Don't call me Sir Roland!" I screamed.

"It means man, not angel!" he shrieked back. "It means you're a knight of Queen Merilar, not a divine messenger of God!"

"Oh," I whispered. Suddenly I understood why people kept calling me that, and what they must have thought when I asked them not to. I realized what it must mean to the members of my faith. 

"Roland," gasped Dimine. "It's in me. I feel the freezing burn. I need the potion. I need the poison of strength."

"It's not a potion," I wailed, wanting to yell, but my heart was breaking. "It's a broad spectrum suppressor. It's a targeted rejection drug so you can get a blood donation from someone- Oh, son of a bitch."

"Sir Roland-"

"Silence! Thinking!"

I had no needles or tube. The swords had blood grooves, but that wouldn't do anything. Maybe I could cut a vein and make him drink it like a vampire. No, that was stupid.

"Might Pisis have needles?" I asked Motin.

"Yes. He's a blood doctor."

"What the- No, tell me later. You said he was up ahead?"

"I think so. These tunnels lead to the Cave of Fireflies where we meet,, safe from the orthodoxy and the queen. That's where Pisis should be."

"Right. Don't die!" I yelled at Dimine. "I command you to live!"

I took off running.

Yes, it could have been a complex trap, but I had to look at myself in a mirror. If I guessed wrong and Dimine shouldn't die, I couldn't endure being me any more. I ran like a fell wind, unmindful of subtlety or stealth. I hoped they heard me coming. I didn't want to go looking for them.

I went through a locked door into a basement. The tunnel went nowhere else. Upstairs was a silent house, and beyond that was an amphitheater of yrch construction. I paid it no mind. Tens of people were worshipping me in effigy, a wicker man of my current face a dozen feet tall, and it was alive with glow bugs. My effigy had a halo, and all the congregation was lit in the glow. There was a man on the pulpit above.

"You!" I politely inquired. "Are you Pisis?"

"Ah- No?" he stammered.

He sounded like he was lying. I charged him and jumped, soaring, but distances were deceiving. I came down way too early and should have crashed into the shocked congregation. Instead my foot landed on a firefly and found purchase. I took another step, found another bumbling insect, and then I was dashing across the air. Thought the cave roof was a dark sky, it was the stars underfoot that lit my way. Pisis fled.

 

Running from me wasn't very effective. I'm not criticizing him for it. All things considered, and please excuse me implicit arrogance, running was pretty reasonable. But I ran him down and threw him to the stone in the dark.

"How are you a blood doctor?" I yelled.

"Well, my father's brother was a blood doctor, and when he was looking for an apprentice-" Pisis began uncertainly. He sounded completely truthful, bewildered, but truthful.

"Shut up!" I interrupted him. "Can you perform transfusions?"

"Oh yes," he assured me before I started hitting him. I got that from people a lot. "I have my kit right here." He pulled something out of his robe.

My mouth fell open. That isn't metaphor. I was looking at him with my mouth closed, and he pulled out a perfect Wynta Health blood donation kit. Donate every eight weeks because the life you save could be your own. It was missing the cellophane wrapper, but in a parchment roll was everything he needed. It had needles, cotton swabs, tubes of some kind of animal. Various bits were held together with springy bark instead of rubber bands, but everything was there. It was perfect. During this observation my mouth opened, bottom jaw flaccid, and a firefly tried to get it. That was gross, so I spit it out and closed my mouth.

"How?" I demanded.

"My uncle?" he pleaded, meaning, 'will you not hit me?'

I suddenly remembered the captain and Vincent, and specifically, the captain's complaints that none of this made sense. This whole world didn't make sense. I had been here for most of a century, and they had blood transfusions, and -- Oh my God, I was turning into Sandy.

I was Sandy. I was angry all the time and ready to fight. I was here to fight. I knew nothing of the world outside of fighting. I had come late, explored the land but never the people, and now people might die because I didn't know something simple. Sandy had given me more than his face and strength. He was remaking me as him, possibly unintentionally, and soon I would become him.

I forced myself to think sanely. 

"Pisis, do you have my bottle of potion-rocks?" This world needed a word for pills.

"Yes."

"Give them to me."

He did. I counted. The numbers matched.

"Pisis, you are coming with me. You are going to make a blood donation from me to someone else, someone you've lied to, and possibly someone you've killed. If you fail me, well, tell me. Are there other blood doctors?"

"Yes?" he suggested, scared that answer was about to get him killed.

"Keep that in mind," I suggested and took him back.

 

On the cusp of giving Dimine the transfusion, I warned, "This will probably kill you."

"I understand," he said, but it sounded so light. The words didn't weigh enough for him to mean them. But what else to do? I had to look in a mirror without gagging.

"Do it," I told the Chalcedony Moor, and he plunged the needle into my vein.

There were no miracles or lights. I'd been worrying about backpressure, but Dimine had so little blood in him it didn't matter. I squeezed a rock and pumped second hand Blood of Amber into his veins until Pisis said we should stop. He unhooked us, and I pressed a cotton ball into my elbow pocket, holding it above my head. I tried to rationalize this into cave of red runes and shoggoths.

"So-" began Pisis, and I interjected, "Shut up."

Pisis shut up. Everyone else did too. We waited. Dimine twitched a little. He didn't look good, but he was breathing. We waited. We waited longer. The time to do something came upon us.

"We're going back to Queen Lolimer," I said. "You four just took vows of silence. Is anyone going to try to kill you on sight?"

Four heads shook.

"Good. Silence." We went back the way we came. The shoggoth had retreated up its hiding hole and let us pass without incident.


	10. Chapter 10

10

It made no sense for there to blood transfusions in a place corresponding to my world's middle-ages. Did it make more or less sense than getting cast across worlds, superpowers via blood, and everything else? There was no way of knowing. That train of thought plunged off the cliff of speculation into absurdity. There was no sense in chasing it, and fortunately I can immediately stop worrying about something outside my control. Oh, wait. 

Instead we climbed out of the pit and found Yve. She waited with her dogs.

"Thank you for waiting," I said. We pulled the others up by rope.

"What else would I do? You said don't go in after you, but I couldn't leave," she demanded.

I shrugged, and we carted Dimine to the Palace.

 

Once there with the casualty situated, I drew aside the queen. "Do you have a moment? We need to talk privately."

She blinked then said yes. We went aside to a stableyard, empty in the morning. She fumbled with her hands. 

"So I just found out I have a cult," I said.

"You want to talk about your cult?" 

"What else would we talk about?"

"Nothing," she replied instantly. "So, your cult?"

"Yes, I have one. That's just weird."

She didn't say anything. It probably didn't seem weird to her because she'd grown up with it. 

"About my knighthood," I continued. "I don't like titles, but I understand now why you'd make a point of one. I want to be clear I support your reign. Your father's too. I never met him but he seems-" I struggled for a word. "-legitimate."

"We appreciate your fealty and support, Sir Roland. You are a fine defender of the realm."

"Fantastic. Do you know what a blood transfusion is?"

Her Majesty turned to me with stark concern. "Yes. Why?"

"Damn. That would have simplified matters."

"Sir Roland, have you slept recently?"

"No."

"We will have rooms prepared. We're delighted by your presence, but you seem weary."

"That is an excellent idea," I agreed. We turned back, for our walk had taken us to the far corner of the stableyards. "Show Yves all due honors. She conducted herself admirably."

"Yes, Sir Roland. We will fete her well."

We returned to the palace and paused in the doorway. She looked like she wanted to say something but didn't. The things I wanted to say were about blood transfusions, antibiotics, infections, and generally matters I should be more awake for. 

"Your Majesty." I bowed. People were watching. Servants took me to rooms, and I became dead for ten hours.

 

They did blood transfusions. They had figured out a way to make it work. They cast needles, used herbs as antiseptics, concocted tubing and pumps, and somehow the whole thing was done within acceptable rarity of infection. My head slammed again and again into that fact, providing nothing by confusion and migraines. Eventually it would boil down into acceptance, but that was far in the future. 

I kept wanting to grab people in the halls and shake them. "You fight with swords. You haven't invented a steam engine. Your court physician explained the process of donating platelets like I was a toddler. You think the world is flat!"

In fact the world could be flat. I had no idea. I asked the physician again. He said it was round. He explained things about the shadow on the moon and the lengths of shadows from sticks throughout the year. He did math. He even gave me fairly specific guess as to the equatorial diameter. Somehow that still bothered me. I fought off a compulsion to drink heavily. 

 

Pisis, Chalcedony Moor, was sitting in a side room, careful not to attract attention. I sat down with him. Dimine was out, Motin and Root were wandering the palace, dazed, and Huggard was immobile. It was just the two of us.

"So, tell me things," I began.

"You want to know where the plan came from? You think there was some whisper in my ear?"

"Maybe not in so many words, but something."

"No, it was nothing like that. We watched you for years, Roland. Since you first appeared. Originally it was just talk moving around. People who sat with you told others because we didn't know who or what you were. By my mother's time we were already collecting stories. It was after Merilar turned you down and Celeste asked for an annulment. We watched. We talked. The orthodoxy of Angel Roland already existed. I went through stories.

"They talked, infrequently, about your potion. I was careful and I found the fragments. I laid my own plans, and we followed you when you went out, noted the routes you took mack. It wasn't whispers Roland. We paid attention."

"You came to the wrong conclusion," I said. "There is no potion. It doesn't do what you think."

 

The coup went off two days later. Simple but cohesive, well planned without being overly complex, it was executed by fanatics with finesse. Four out of five stars, would fight off again. 

As a dutiful knight, in no way an angel, I sat in Lolimar's throne room. We observed all the ceremonies. Lolimar was the soul of grace, floating in her seat. There was a magnetism that drew attention to her and held her audience enraptured. She piled some titles on me so we could repeat the oaths of fealty. They were different than before, from Merilar's time. Now they called the land Isenmist, and I pledged to serve Lolimar under the gaze of Udan, Sun-Maker and Star-Carver. I did without compunction. 

After that I found a few people of influence and indicated I supported Lolimar fiercely. Stories of the shoggoth were starting to float around. They took me very seriously. I ate and drank, and on the second day Dimine woke up.

It was close to noon. Most of us had been up for six to eight hours, from the lazy ones who slept in till dawn to us who rose before first light. Most of the lords worked fields, and their day was almost ending. Dinner was on with supper coming soon. A few of us with nothing to do lazed in the halls. Excuses ranged from Myrin's, richest of the trappers, who was resting his animals before another month long sally in the Fingers, to Salphair's, whom liked drinking.

Motin rushed in a side door, excited, and in silence he waved to me. He was almost giddy. I read Dimine was awake in his posture.

"Excuse me," I said and raced out.

Motin nodded when we were sprinting down the halls. House workers clucked at us in disapproval. 

"When?" I asked.

"Just now," he panted. "I came at once."

"Good man." 

Though he was leading, in my haste I outdistanced him. Motin called directions from behind me and pointed out a door. I forgot him and rushed ahead, barely waiting for the door to open before I was through and trying not to lose my head.

Axemen started it. Two went for my head, and I leaned and skidded, under the axes and into the room full of murderers. There was a wild madness of axes and swords. Someone kicked the door shut, and little light sprinkled through the eaves. It was dark, full of glinting shadows.

It got worse when I misjudged a dodge and nearly brained myself. I fell and flailed. Someone else fell and took his neighbor with him. An explosion of blind kicks and punches flooded the floor, but no one started chopping yet for fear of hitting a friend.

That moment my fanatics took the main gate. They couldn't wait for the signal any more, putting a ram to the doors. They took the hall and antechambers immediately. My drinking buddies started screaming, and the house took it up. The cult took it up. It was everywhere when I got out of the room.

"You lied to me!" screamed Motin, lurking in the hall. "You said it was a poison!" He was both gaunt and flushed, white lipped and wide eyed. His skin was wet with sweat.

Hell. I ran and lurched, and armed men kept boiling out of doorways. There was a fight and someone connected with a mattock. My left leg stopped working. I got outside and hobbled.

Yves was with her dogs. They were straining at the leash or whimpering, driven by the noise. I stumbled over to her and in bright daylight started to feel how bad my head hurt.

"What's happening?" she asked, arms full of howling dogs.

"My cult is attacking," I gasped, and she screamed. 

"You bastard!" She backhanded me with a leather strap.

"No!" I smacked at her, but everything was moving. She hit me again, and I wound up punching her arm. "I'm not with those guys!"

"You lead them in-"

"They tried to kill me!"

Everyone tried to kill me. It was what you did. 

"Where's the queen?" Yves demanded.

"I don't know. Have your dogs find her."

"It doesn't work like that. I need a scrap of her clothing or to take them to a place she's been."

I looked back at the palace which shook with violence.

"Hell. Come with me," I ordered and tried to shake off my headache. There was a buzzing under the barking and yells. We stormed back into the palace.

It was just a pitched melee, and the hounds made it worse. All of them deserted an indignant Yves before we could make it to the throne. There everyone was dead, no one left to swing an axe, and there was no queen. This didn't look like the work of a group to take her alive.

We took the back door and found fighting. Yves waded in, I followed, and people started dropping. Eventually it was Root, Lolimar, and us. 

"See, we're not with them," I told Yves.

"Motin is," Root added.

"Whatever. Dimine and Huggard?"

"Gone."

"What?"

"Just gone. I went to see them before coming to the throne."

"Bad." Mention of the throne reminded me of something, to wit, the queen. "You dead, Your Majesty?"

"No, Sir Roland-"

"Good. We're running away."

Lolimar looked at me but didn't argue. We were all silent. The palace was beginning to burn, and that distant thunder was closing. There were voices demanding a surrender.

"Will they kill the prisoners?" Lolimar asked Root.

"That was never the plan."

Yves started yelling, and the queen shushed her. I struggled through the fog. "Pisis?"

"The whole thing is his."

I smelled the first hint of smoke, with it cam white butterflies and snatches of song. The distant thunder became a nearby roar.

We fled. The palace burned. Moving became a functional haze. The yards gave way to the city, but everyone was either elsewhere or inside. The gates were open and unmanned. We pressed east, then north for the Fingers.

"Think they'll come after us?" Root asked Her Majesty later, when we entered the foothills. 

"No, no soon," she replied. "Pisis will secure his rule, put out the fires. Besides, who will want to come after him?" she indicated me.

"Right now could be anyone," suggested Yves. "He's not looking too good."

"But they don't know that, and more importantly, he's their angel. Will Pisis send his fanatics after their angel when their angel is helping me escape?" Lolimar spoke slowly, looking backwards at the plume of smoke. Her voice was perfectly detached, calm, and sounded incongruous. Her eyes were full of earnest, terrible grief. We could see it but couldn't hear it. 

"Let's get further into the mountains," Yves suggested. We made good time.


	11. Chapter 11

11

Isenmist fell. Her walls stood, but the palace crumbled. After it smoldered, they drowned it. We stopped at a pass before the mountains took us out of sight to regard her. A beautiful little city she had been. Walls like a halo. Parks and courtyards scattered by design. Queen Lolimar wept, and we thought better of her for it. Root wept as well for his twisted part in it. Yves scratched at a flee. 

"So what was the plan?" we asked Root later.

"Pisis said he came up with it after you grabbed him. More than half the palace was his, and then you stayed, supporting the queen. All his long games came crashing down because the longer you stayed, the more our side, either orthodoxy or us heretics, would leave the faith. 

"I was with him, then against, then with. I felt like I was being torn apart. When it happened Motin went off to bait you, and I looked for Dimine. I couldn't find him, and so I went looking. In the throne room I saw Your Majesty, and words started spilling out., Their surprised was ruined. We fled and fought, again, and then you came.

"Now I don't know. I'm a traitor to my church, and what else? Nothing? We flee into the wastes." Root said all of this seated, staring at his feet. His knees were up by his shoulders, and he explained everything hopelessly. 

Her Majesty sank into lethargy as well. Yves and I exchanged looks, seeking guidance or strength. We didn't have the former. 

 

That night I was awoken by a late sound. In silence I looked around, but everyone was gone. Yve might be on watch, her or Root, but the other and Her Majesty should be about. I stole upright and listened, following hints of noise.

They lead to Root and the queen. He was on top of her, head about chest level, and Lolimar was caressing his back and hair. Her own head was thrown back. She started whispering his name, urging him on. I left.

Yve was still on guard, perched on a rock. I sat with her.

"Why are you awake?" she asked.

"I wanted to get away from the others."

"The others?"

"They're around there," I pointed at a brown-stone massif.

"They-" she waited for clarification.

"Yes."

"Yes- Oh my goodness." Yve squeaked when surprised. I hadn't noticed. 

It would have been a long, uncomfortable silence if there was any expectation of speaking, but guard shift is best when everyone minds their peace. 

"I'm waiting for my dogs," Yve admitted without preamble. "They should be able to follow us. I'm hoping they do."

She got her wish in the morning. One of them, a brown speckled hound with one droopy ear, arrived over the hillside. He was lean and exhausted but rushed her with delight. She dropped to meet him, digging her fingers into the dirty fur, and he shook with excitement. 

I reached down and traced a fine line coming from behind him. The brute had been dragging it along. It lead back over the mountains toward Isenmist, a white unbroken strand. A spider might lay a thread like that.

"Break camp. Now."

 

We ran straight north. There were few easy crossings of the Fingers, but we found one. Down the far side into hills and forests, we crossed a rushing river without human name on a bridge of tumbled stone. One time a plinth had guarded the river canyon, and it would have been tall and proud. Something had broken it at the base. Now it spanned the river, webbed in cracks. We passed one by one without trouble.

On the far side we entered a bracken wood with thorny underbrush for fear of pursuit. It smelled fine, and flower bushes and sweet scents wrapped the air. Flowers brought bees, and they buzzed merrily. 

Yve was carrying her hound, Persimmon, and stumbled. She twisted to land on her back, protecting the dog, but that got her rolling. Persimmon yelped and then they were both gone into the foliage. 

We other three hurried together, poking with sticks, but couldn't find them. Insect life buzzed happily. Root was obviously nonplussed we couldn't find them, looking back and forth between the queen and I.

"Are you dead?" I eventually yelled when worry won over stealth.

Like echoing through a tunnel, we heard, "Yes."

"Well, did the dog a least make it?" Root demanded. 

"I've never liked you," echoed back.

It looked like a pit trap but there were no stakes. The sides were sheer and vertical, clear of underbrush. Curiously, roots and tubers in the walls hadn't been cut, but somehow turned back. Furthermore they were furred in thorns. Roots and tubers don't typically have thorns. Yves had landed on her back and had the wind knocked out of her, but Persimmon was fine. It was well trained to be silent. We pulled back the surface of the underbrush to put the light full upon them.

"Well?" asked Yve. We carried no rope.

"You're in a pit trap," I said. I was looking blankly at her and around for the digger. 

"We can make a rope out of something," began Root, but Yve interrupted.

"If the paranoid one is right, and this is a trap, then it was made. And if I made a trap, those walls would be sharp as razors."

"If you made such a trap and we used our clothes to pull you out, our clothes would be shredded," I replied.

"Yes," she agreed. She brushed dirt off her hands, looking at us. "I'd make my trap so you had to come down to get me."

Yve and I understood each other then. In her eyes I could read her thoughts. She didn't know who or why, but how was obvious. She was mindful of the queen, our obligations to them both, and what was liable to happen. Lolimar was about to make the decision, and Yve was going to disagree. But she understood.

"I say we leave her in there as bait," I said before anyone could suggest or refuse noble sacrifices. "Then, whenever whatever dug the trap comes to check, we jump on it, beat it to death, and take it's stuff."

Everyone turned to look at me.

"I'm dead serious. They moved a lot of earth to dig this, and there are no dirt piles. That means they've got tools and transportation. We need both."

An entire argument imploded without firing. It was premature resolution.

Root was the only sane one and therefore confused. Yve was scared we wouldn't leave her and terrified that we might. Her Majesty was momentarily lost in her thoughts, staring down into the pit. I looked around for opposition, but no one had any except Yve.

"I like this plan least," she grumbled.

"You'll be fine." I swept away her concerns. "Now everyone hide."

We hid, and the bees came.

The swarm was millions. They looked like a fog, black and angry, that drifted in from the north. Thousands came before as a vanguard. They passed over us, ignoring us people like bees normally do, before we'd recognized the swarm for what it was. We thought there was some human agency in the swarm, hiding in it, or coming behind. No, it was the swarm. Then it was too late.

Yve didn't start screaming. Even if she was going like a stoic, the dog wasn't barking either. The sky grew dark over the pit, and we waited in fear. The swarm began raising a mound over her before we knew what was going on, and some of it departed. The rest remained as surly, aggressive guards that attacked anyone coming close. The remainder was still millions of bees, so we retreated. 

"Are you there?" Yve yelled from within the hole. Her voice was small and brave. 

"We are!" yelled back the queen. The bees didn't seem to care.

"Are they still there?" Yves asked.

"Yes. The bees have you," Root yelled. 

This was impolitic, and Lolimar scowled at him.

"Oh." Yve went quiet. 

I circled the nest, and it was a black mound, high as a hut. We could within ten meters, where scores of workers were covering every flower, and talk. As the foragers moved out, an interdiction zone expanded and push us with it. 

"We're yelling through it, so it can't be that thick. You want me to take a shot?" I asked Lolimar.

"Let's reserve that. Are you unhurt?" she called.

"No worse than I was. Long fall but a soft landing," Yve replied.

We were baffled. We didn't have a plan, and intense pressure to act squeezed us. When we finally picked out way elsewards, a few hundred meters away, we felt defeated. I felt I had personally failed because my bait plan had prevented us from leaving. 

But you can't fight bees. You can't fight millions of them. She was in their mound. If I made it in, neither of us would make it out. But how could we just walk away? We crouched in the lilac to try to come up with something. 

"Fire?"

"Too wet."

"Flood?"

"River's in a canyon."

"Armor up and run?"

"Even if we armored me enough, Yve wouldn't make it if the swarm attacked."

It didn't matter who was asking what, because we were just throwing words at each other, obsessed with a compulsion to get them said. Rejections were instantaneous. Hunger and tension bit our ankles, exploding into hissed shouting matches. Lolimar and I were whispering vile, hateful things at each other when a turnip got shoved between us.

"Eat that," said Root, my ex-cultist and Her Majesty's paramore. "Sorry, I was so nervous I forgot to look at the plants we're hiding in. Almost all of this is edible."

He had a pleading expression, and his eyes implored us. Lolimar took the turnip.

"Everything?" I asked.

"Almost. Don't eat the thorns. See those plants with two leaves, brown center? Pull it up and there's a white bulb. It's delicious."

None of us had really eaten in four days. Maybe it really was delicious. I don't know or care. We ate plants down into the dirt, drinking from stems, and it was ambrosia. 

 

"If it rains, the bees should go inside or underground," Root mused. "You should be able to get right up to the edge. There might be more inside, but if you could jump in, grab her, and jump out, they shouldn't chase you."

We three were seated in a circle, the tiniest of fires between us. It was dark now. We were still digging at a plan.

"Do bees sleep at night?" asked the queen.

Root and I shrugged at her.

"If they slept, we could crawl up to the edge. There looked like a main opening at the top, and we could push food in so at least she could eat," Lolimar continued.

"We could try," Root assented. "Maybe they'll sleep enough to break her out."

"No. We'll try feeding her, but we wait. This is what we wanted," I countered.

"What we wanted- You're still thinking of her as bait?" Lolimar exclaimed.

"Exactly. We got distracted because it was bees, not men or yrch, but they're obviously keeping her. Let's see why."

They had to agree. We had no alternatives except various forms of group suicide. I didn't know what a million odd bees would do to someone and didn't want to learn.

I don't know what I would have done if Lolimar had ordered me to try. 

We addressed the point of getting Yve food. One of the tubers grew in a hard grey ball. Broken open the meat was wet and sweet if bland, and we gathered a mound of them. The bees were definitely quieting, but some hints of sunset remained in the sky. We intended to wait until midnight, then make the attempt to get the tubers to Yve.

Before then, as the moon rose red and angry, something came from the north. Half its face sanguine red and half gone, the thing charged into the midst of the bees on footsteps that burned. Trails of phosphorus fire fell from a smoke cloud behind it, and only when it stopped moving for a while did the cloud fade. It had the head of an ox, but the body of a stylized man, too thick and stout to be real. The bees were sleeping but awoke in fury that soon abated. Then the thing pulled aside the skin of the hive.

"Human female, water and honey is provided. Eat and drink, or you will be helped." It had more vocal chords than a man, and a bifurcated throat. When it spoke it did so in resonance. Every word sounded chanted by a choir in harmony.

"I don't want your help!" Yve yelled out. 

"That is at best irrelevant," it replied. "What sustenance does your animal require?"

She was quiet for a while, long enough for her to hear and understand, perhaps touch Persimmon. Yve fought a battle of wills alone in the dark, and the brown dog looked up at his human, trusting. 

"Meat. He eats meat," she said. 

I was sorry she lost, but I would have thought less of her if she'd won.

"I will get you some. The mite-children will alter your quarters to make them more comfortable. Sanitation and moisture will be provided. Do not interfere. They may react."

It stood still, listening, but Yve's despair owned her. She didn't reply. The beast turned stoutly, moving initially from the waist up, and its feet following after. Then it blasted across the plain, a localized ball of lightning, and stove in the ground with a fist. Some field-mice died. It carried them back for the dog. The anger of the moon faded as it rose, until it cast sterile white light, and the last thing we saw was the ox-headed guardian waiting over the hole.

We snuck away, far away, until finally Root stopped to ask, "Who or what is that?" of Lolimar. 

It's funny how fast they were moving. Already his first thought was of her. She didn't know, of course, so I answered.

"That is Gun the Geiger. That is someone I really don't want to fight."

"You were just willing to go into a hive-" began Lolimar, and I stopped her.

"Yeah, well, priorities."

"Sir Roland," began Queen Lolimar formally. "Who is the Geiger?"

"That is Gun. He was here when we fled Glen Herrin, and the yrch chased. He may be here after we are gone. His power is very deep, but he has gone over to Alamach of the Northlands, who scares the yrch. I had hoped the Geiger would remain in the northlands as well. If he is here, it is Alamach that desires Yve. We are in very grave trouble."

"Are you worried about fighting Gun because of his own power or Alamach's?" Root asked.

"Yes."

Root twitched like he was going to smack me. He held still until his hand shook, and then waved one finger in my face. "Do you have any idea how irritating that is?" he snapped.

Lolimar reached out and pulled his hand down. "Sir Roland, expound."

"Well I'm not fighting him in the dark over a mound of bees!" I exclaimed.

"Then in the morning we will go talk to him," she decided, and that was the end of that.

 

We approached at high noon. Gun saw us coming and ordered the bees aside. They rolled back like a wave, held at breaking.

"Roland," he greeted me. "We have not met, but I've heard of you."

"Gun the Geiger, I have heard of you as well. I had expected more." A little flattery doesn't hurt.

The Geiger preened unconsciously. Up close he had the body to make a man feel inadequate. He had half a meter in height on me without the horns and several hundred kilograms. His forearms were thicker than my waist. The Geiger's body wasn't human. The ox-head gave it away, but it looked just human enough that one might leap to incorrect conclusions. He was like a teenage dream, impossible but close. His bones weren't hinged quite like a man's, his muscles were knitted differently, and yet they were close enough to invite comparison. 

"It pleases me to meet you. May I offer you honey and water?" he repeated.

"It would impress and delight us. My companions are called Ryeseed and Crystal," which was recursively true.

Formally we drank springwater and ate honeycomb. Yve, who watched, remained silent. We were obviously up to something and she didn't know what, so she didn't spoil it.

"Your courtesy sets a new standard of conduct. Mindful of this, I will tell others and I do not think anyone will feel your gratitude to them compares," I said when finished.

Gun preened again, a wave of flexion that curled up through his frame. Ego is how you get them.

"Your words are kind," he said eventually.

I nodded. We waited. "She's with me," I said finally, when I admitted defeat trying to think of something more subtle. 

"I gathered," Gun replied.

His great ox head nodded. I forgot how big they are. His forehead was like my chest. The Geiger's people were given to patience, so I waited.

"My duty is very clear. I must retain her until she is collected."

His patience lifted any pressure I had to reply swiftly. I looked at him, calculating, as he looked at me. 

The Geiger was taller, heavier, and older. Geiger was a war title that meant, most accurately and loosely, one you don't want to fight. God, I didn't. His people, the Omote, don't have human conceptions of modesty but there are a few best ways to carry things on a person. Thus he wore pants, armored, and strapped to the small of his back was the Ending, his table-sized broadsword.

Some people think wielding a two-handed weapon one-handed is a matter of strength. They're only faintly right. It's a matter of leverage. A human hand is only so wide, and with the butt of the palm as a fulcrum, the max torque the fingers can apply is pretty much fixed. Get stronger all you want, you aren't going to exercise your bones thicker. 

Gun wasn't human. He had peculiar inner workings that might not work in other shadows. His palms were wider than my double-handed grip. The Ending was meteor forged, battle tested, and according to yrch legend, polished in the fires of mountain lava. The yrch had a lot to say about the Geiger. The yrch kept forgetting what his title meant, but every time I asked about it, they remembered. If they survived, they remembered. 

I stared quietly at Yve, who sat with her dog. I thought of Persimmon. He was a smelly little mongrel. Blood transfusions this world had, but no cure for canine halitosis. Or maybe they did. Maybe this was how he smelled after. Yve had her thin arms around him, and the dog looked excitedly around.

"I will oppose you in that," I said finally.

"That does not please me," Gun admitted.

"It does not please me either."

Gun nodded. He started clearing some bracken, getting his sword arm warm. Even short steps drove lightning to spark from the ground, creating a trail of burned air and smoke. I started to stretch.

"So?" Lolimar, called Crystal exactly once, prompted.

"I'm going to fight him. He's honorable. If he wins, he'll let you leave." I made a point of explaining extra.

"Naturally," agreed Gun over his shoulder.

"You're going to fight him?" asked Root, not sure what to make of it.

"There's no alternative."

"I thought you didn't want to fight him!" demanded Lolimar, dropping the royal we. That was the first time.

"I don't."

"Udan's grace on knights, I now understand my grandmother." She snorted. "Gun the Geiger, without combat may we join our comrade?"

Gun paused in his toil. "That is within my duty."

"Will these bees harm us?"

"No. Within our understanding they will make you comfortable."

She turned back to me and waved her hands. "Problem: Solved."

Now we wouldn't get to our no friends in time to meet our no allies, and if our many enemies came after us, they'd have to deal with a swarm of bees bordering on its own geography. And the Geiger. They'd have to fight the Geiger. Darn. 

I shrugged at the queen and waltzed into the trap.


	12. Chapter 12

12

Gun's orders were simple. He was to retain whatever fell into Alamach's trap. He interpreted this to mean Yve could not leave at all, hence the bees preparing sanitation. We, who had not fallen into the trap, could come and go as we pleased. He trusted us not to flee with the captive. That was one of the reasons I respected Gun. He was willing to trust honor.

Omote slept on their feet, occasionally moving like fidgeting, so it was impossible to tell when his guard was raised. We talking about an escape attempt, but no one rushed to gain more enemies. Even Yve cautioned patience. 

"Our alternatives aren't that great."

 

We waited. More omote came, though none more terrible. By now there were hives in all directions, jutting up from the brush. I call them bees, but in some ways they were more wasp or termite. They didn't bother us, save by bringing the other omote, and we didn't bother them. Then we left, and they stayed. That valley would be forever pollinated. 

None of us could run with the omote. It wasn't the pace; it was their footsteps shot lightning. Oddly enough Persimmon ran just fine, and tumbling sparks, burning in his fur, didn't bother him. They burned his coat pure white. He struggled the first few days, then kept up fine. His breath even improved. 

The Keep of Alamach was a hollowed out mountain. Once a face had adorned it. Then the hives had spread over the face. Now it looked like it was screaming as insects burrowed into the skin. The mountain was covered in flowers, and fields of wild ones ran out in all directions. The road up was bounded in rose walls. There was color everywhere, and that face sticking out of the middle of it. 

Our road ringed the mountain once, then found a glass enclosure hidden behind a peak's ear. It was translucent comb for the lower walls and floors, and above that was glass. Clouds boiled by, streaming around the roofing two meters above our heads. 

We were taken to an interrogation room where Alamach of the Northlands, also known as Captain Derwent, who had efficiently conquered my world, recognized me as soon as we met. I as well. 

"Oh, my god," he hissed in my home tongue. I hadn't heard it in so long it sounded unnatural.

I fell into a chair and waved my hands. That was it. I was done. I checked out.

"I didn't really believe it," he whispered.

"Of course. Why not? Why would it be anyone else? You, the bees. It's so obvious, just like everything else in the world jumping nonsense that is my life!" I ranted.

"Sir Roland, you're shouting," interjected Her Majesty.

"Because fuck Sandy, that's why!" I shouted.

"You want something to drink?" asked the captain.

"Aren't we going to kill each other?"

"No!" retorted the captain, tone full of scorn.

"Why not!?"

Derwent blinked at me. "Do I really need a reason for that? I'm pretty sure not-killing people is still my default state."

"Oh crackers," I hissed and asked for that drink.

Derwent didn't speak human common, so I had to translate. I refused to translate. I ranted. Captain Derwent brewed a mead brandy and poured it down my throat in an effort to sedate me. He overshot, and I passed out. 

 

I woke up in an empty warehouse with a tree hanging from the ceiling. The trunk was banded off in iron, dangling vertically on four massive chains, and swinging with imperceptible air currents. I faintly recalled yelling something about this. I stood up with a minimal hangover, approached the tree trunk, and jabbed it lightly. 

Oak, probably. Very dense and about three feet in diameter, ten feet tall. It felt oddly soft to my fist. I jabbed again, and the trunk began to pendulum. Jab, cross, jab, hook, and the trunk swung wide, stopped, and spun. The gimbal twisted silently. I tapped it a few more times, then walked aside and ritually stripped to the waist.

It had been seventy five years of lifting, running, and working. Most of a century of fights, skirmishes to battles, was hardened and condensed into my fists. I got the tree swinging and then followed the rhythm of it. I was rusty at first, and then briefly fluid before the tension set in. I stopped for a stretch and started kicking. They flowed into strikes and back. I loosened up again, for real this time, and increased my speed. I increased it again. Finally I threw caution to the wind and declared war on those four chains, hammering that tree until the jingle-jangle of leaping metal echoed around me. 

"We missed you at breakfast," Yve said from behind me, and I awoke to the real world.

"Oh, sorry. I must have overslept."

"No, we heard the noise. I was curious, so I came looking."

"Huh. Imagine that."

I pawed the target and slowed it, bouncing against my hand a few times.

"That was the most uncomfortable breakfast I've ever had," added Yve. 

"Why?"

"We don't know each other's languages," she replied pointedly.

"That would do it. How did Root take it?"

Yve smiled, and her eyes went keen. "Do you want to know?"

I was about to get gossipped at. Whatever. I said I did.

Roots had tried to visit Lolimar during the night, and she'd rebuffed him. Then, during breakfast, the queen had started trying to learn Derwent's language. The captain of course acceded, and devoted his time to her during the meal. Yve spoke with pulse-pounding excitement, tapping the details with relish. She started in the doorway, but kept pouncing forward, leaping from story detail to the next, until she and I were facing each other with only her smelly dog in between. I was trying not to laugh at her intensity for it all when knuckles drummed the door. It was Derwent himself.

"Good afternoon," he said. 

Derwent didn't quip. He saw the condition of the tree and figured it out, as he saw through jokes about the food. He was too smart, saw through them too fast, and idle humor tired him. He particularly liked physical humor, slapstick and impressions, but I would not learn that yet.

"Good afternoon," I replied, and Yve smiled. 

"Have you eaten?" he asked.

"No."

"You'll notice I didn't kill you while you slept." Captain Derwent's body language was closed, feet together with arms crossed. 

There were several snide responses I bit back. "Thank you. I also noticed you left me a kicking bag."

"Yes. In your state last night you requested it, so I provided. You're welcome."

Gall tingled my stomach, because he might have been responding to my other thanks, but I doubted it. He was preempting more gratitude. I would have given it to him, but he poisoned that well. Instead I tapped the tree and let it pendulum behind me. 

"Captain Derwent has graciously provided me some exercise equipment," I told Yve, who was wearing an awkward smile. "It's delightful of him."

"Are you two old friends?"

"Sort of. He tried to kill me once. I broke his head."

"Oh!" she exclaimed and even more awkwardly glanced between the two of us. I hit Derwent with a fake smile. "So, Captain, shall I see you at lunch?"

"We need to talk business, so perhaps it would be best if it was just the two of us," he replied.

"Ouch. I've already invited Yve. It will be the two of us plus one."

He read the situation and declined to argue. Having miss-played his hand with the tree trunk and lost the good will from that, he was lacking options and for whatever reason, chose not to press the issue. With an equally fake smile he left.

"He extended his welcome to dinner. You will be joining us, won't you?" I asked her.

"Umm. He looked like he wanted to talk to you privately."

"Nah. He really wants the whole group, and it would be rude to refuse his hospitality."

"The group? The queen and Root too?"

"Of course. It'll be a party."


	13. Chapter 13

13

She left me to prepare, and I sat on a rough stone. Derwent's fortress had been formed of hands older than men, and it was coarse and irregular. Idle stones lifted from the floor like pillars thats supported nothing. It was one of these I sat on.

God, I was so mad. It was sickening. There was a stone in my stomach that was leaking poison. I lowered my face into my sweaty fingers and scraped at my skin. Perspiration had formed muddy jelly in the creases around my nose. It peeled off in strips. My breathing was under control, but I went through old exercises, inhaling through my nose and exhaling through my mouth. Even there I could taste the anger. What does fire taste like to a dragon?

I looked back at my punching bag, and tapped it gently, just enough to put a twist into its swing. I realized then, really understood at a visceral level, that I was punching an oak tree, iron banded and hard, with my bare hands. My knuckles had smashed the wood and felt cushioned against it. This had all seemed so reasonable. I petted the wood, and it was hard as oak should be, unforgiving. Yet to my fingertips, there was was a bit of give, a tiny indication of softness. I settled the tree, held it until the tiniest of vibrations dampened away, and then slammed it with everything I had. Old Graupa said you almost never got a perfect shot in a fight, but if you did, you'd better be able to capitalize. The impact bent the board, set the top and bottom wiggling about the middle, and the metal creaked as it bit into wood. I thought about how hard I must have hit it and stared at my fist, thinking of the impossible intensity of my rage. I couldn't remember ever being this mad in Arryn until after meeting Sandy.

 

When we did meet, Derwent stared at the four of us and sighed. Peculiarly, I was feeling remorseful about bringing them in, but the dice were already cast. I shrugged.

"Perhaps dinner isn't appropriate. Eat quickly, I want to show you something."

Given the language barriers, we had a quick meal, and then processed out the back. Along the way we collected several of the omote. In the wild flower fields of the peak's shoulders, Derwent led us down to a deep nested hive. It was ten times taller than a man, and the central entrance was big enough for one to walk upright. The walls were covered in bees. We entered and descended, down into its nethery pits.

The beehive was probably the size of a parking garage in volume. At the bottom we exited into a vast chamber where the bees buzzed angrily as we passed. 

"We are not far from the queen. I would encourage you not to go wandering off," he warned us.

In the center of the room was a vast, twisted scrawl of white on black. It was like a path that wound through the darkness in a generally circular manner from outside to center. The path itself radiated a soft bronze light, and there was a faint impression of humming. It's impossible to say for sure, as the hive around us buzzed and thrummed.

"You know what that is?" he asked me.

I did not. "Yes," I replied.

"Then you're wrong. It isn't what you think it is." He added with a hint of a smirk.

Ha ha. He sure fooled me. "Then what is it?"

"I got to thinking about your family. Specifically Gerard. Humor me while I explain my thought process. How exactly is he so strong? How are any of you?

"No, don't take the easy way out. Think about it for a moment. It can't be metabolism. If your metabolisms were that fast, you'd lose all the muscle you gained the first time you fasted. Likewise it can't be normal muscle, because you're not that bulky. Strength-wise you're on par with world-class strongmen, and I think a few could give you a good challenge, but they're human boulders. You're wiry, and even Gerard isn't that big. 

"Here is where you point out it's something about genetics, or whatever counts for genetics in the blood of Amber." This was the first time I'd heard that term. It was probably significant. "But there again, it's not entirely sufficient. If it was just genetics, you'd all be so strong, or so fast, and stay that way with only minor adjustments. Likewise your family should probably be a lot closer in performance, especially in the tighter blood-circles. I think you all think that's what it is because of the essential arrogance of nobility. Royal blood gets you accustomed to thinking you're better than everyone. I'm essentially democratic, so that doesn't work for me. 

"My theory is this: it's your pattern. When you walk it the first time, it imprints itself on you. Vincent told me that, but we spent a little time in Amber together, and that seems to be the common rumor. I think when you walk the pattern it does imprint you, but more specifically, it locks you. It sets whatever condition you walked it in as your normal. That's your baseline. So after that if you feast or starve, exercise or sleep, your body naturally returns to that pattern-set baseline."

He looked at me for confirmation, and I gave him a bland look. He took that for being cagey.

"Along the lines of my theory, that's why you all don't age. Because the pattern decides you're set at so old, and whereas the rest of us steadily get older, you Amberites age forward or back to whatever age the pattern set for you. Good for you, but a bit unfair for the rest of us, especially if we're not quite ready for long naps and senility when our too-short allocation of years runs dry."

He had my attention now. I looked hard at him and tried to put his years in comparison with my memories. It had been too long. He didn't look as old as I felt, but I had no idea what the real distinction was.

"When I made my deal with the Amberite devil, Vincent took me to something he called the Fountain of Youth. He made a point of how blase he was about it. I drank it, and it's been over a hundred years now so it must have worked. But it's not working as well as it used to. I lived for twenty years in Vie and never aged a day. Here, I'm aging slowly, and it terrifies me. Maybe the fountain only works in the shadow he found it, but no matter what, it doesn't work like real Amberite blood. I don't have your powers and your strengths, even the personal stuff, much less power over shadow. And I asked about the pattern, both him and other people in Amber, and they all agree it's only the blood of Amber that can walk it. Your family and no one else. 

"I thought about that for a few decades after I got here, before I met the omote, when it was just me and my bees. I don't have the power or the blood to walk the Pattern of Amber, and I can't get the power of the blood of Amber without walking the pattern. I thought about that for a while, perhaps obsessed might be a better term, and I came up with an idea. This thing. This pattern."

"This isn't the Pattern of Amber. It's the Pattern of Derwent. I made it, grafted it into stone. I've walked it many times, and it hasn't killed me yet. What it does is backwards to your Amberite pattern. Instead of imprinting on you, walking it imprints you on it.

"Eventually you and I are going to get to the business part of this matter. I figure we need to glower sinisterly at each other for a while, speak in meaningless generalities first, and think ominous thoughts. I'd like to skip past that. I want you to walk my Pattern. I think it will take some of the inexhaustible powers of the Amberite Pattern from you and keep them. Since I've already walked it, I think, or at least I'm deluding myself into believing, that when I walk it after you, I'll survive, and some measure of those powers will be transmitted to me. I may not become a full Amberite, and the special powers over shadow might escape me. I'm willing to let that go. But I think I'll get a measure of your powers, and at the very least, I think I'll live forever. 

"So that's the deal. That's what I want. I want you to walk my pattern, and I'll do anything for it. We're talking about immortality here, and if that's beneath your gaze, you can be sure it's not beneath mine. There's got to be something you want. Vincent, maybe?"

"I do appreciate the honesty," I said when I'd thought for a while. "The lack of pretension. You'll betray Vincent for immortality, and you aren't afraid of it. I like that. No haggling, no smoke screens. And I suppose this whole thing could be a trap. We are at the center of one of your bee hives, after all. That could be a trap. That pattern. 

"But you said you don't want to do the usual verbal sparring, so I'll get to the point. First, I want to see you walk that. Now, while I watch. Second, I want to know everything you know about Vincent. We aren't going to play twenty questions where you try to figure out what I know and tell me bits I don't. You don't get to hold anything back. You tell me everything you know. You tell me it all, from the moment you met him to right now. You don't ask questions, you don't play games, you don't play little word tricks. I'll be listening carefully for little misdirections and if I think you're playing games, I'll just walk away. You can die of old age, drooling on yourself like everyone else. Enjoy senility.

"And finally, you aren't going to make any nonsensical promises to yourself that you hold me bound to. If this doesn't work, it doesn't work. I've known people who believed all sorts of nonsense about me in the past, and they believed it so hard when they found out it wasn't true, they thought I, or maybe the world, had lied to them. I'm not doing that again! This is your idea, and yours alone. You go into this with open eyes, watching the world around you, and if it doesn't work, you admit to yourself that's because the plan would never work or the idea was wrong or whatever you need to do, but it's not because I promised you immortality and lied." 

I stomped forward and got right in his face. "I have no idea if this is going to work. I'm more than half convinced it won't. If we try, and it doesn't, you stare yourself in the mirror and understand that's just the way things are. Life's a bitch for those of you who die. Welcome to the human condition."

"Agreed!" he exclaimed and offered me his hand. 

"Also, you'll need to help them." I wiggled a finger at Lolimar, Roots, and Yve. "At most you'll need to conquer the world for them, but you've already done it once."

"You do realize conquering a world is easier said than done, right?" he asked me.

I shook my head at him. "Thinking like a mortal."

He emphatically assured me he would do whatever I required, promises spilling from him in a flood of obsequiousness. No virgin in a hay barn was ever lied to so thoroughly 

That being said, I was lying through my teeth too. The fact that he was unrepentantly betraying his old boss made it go down easier. We shook hands on it, and I committed myself to a good bit of treachery. The irony of that was not lost on me. 

I told him to walk the pattern while I watched, and he set to it. 

Forgive me, dear reader, if I explain some things that are already known to you. They weren't known to me at the time. 

He told me that walking his pattern was as dangerous as the real thing, but he had practiced it regularly. I got the impression he said that for purposes of full disclosure, so he could warn me and wash his hands of my fate. He approached the end on the furthest side and proceeded to examine himself thoroughly, tightening shoe laces, tucking shirts tails in, and checking that his belt was good and tight. He went so far as to take a bracing gulp of water, swirl it around his mouth like a distance runner and spit, wiping his lips on his sleeve. Then he put his first foot to the way.

When he said, 'walk the pattern,' he meant exactly that. I had vague notions of metaphor, but he began striding resolutely forwards, step after careful step along the glowing white pathway, and with each pace the intensity of the glow grew. By the time he was a dozen steps in and rounding the irregular first corner, it was as bright as noon. It got so bright I began to hallucinate, seeing heat shimmers, and the outlines of his form became indistinct. Suddenly they sharpened into restraining white bands, like tape. Derwent was struggling forwards against white cords that seemed anchored to the pattern around him. At first they were only on his feet, and he seemed terribly beset to both keep his balance and make progress. He went further, and they spread upwards. As they spread he slowed, and soon from the hips down he was anchored. His progress slowed to painfully slight, and over the furor of the hive, I heard the bellows of his lungs.

Then he burst through, and the bonds died. He staggered at the sudden release and almost fell. Barely catching his balance in time, he began walking again, and made good progress. I noticed it was darker now, refreshingly so. He swung around the pattern several times, bits of concentric curve that plunged in and out between linear pathways. As his progress began to slow and the light intensified, the restraining bands appeared again. Once more he was held back, and his advance slowed to glacial. He fought through it and the next, and came to a final short straight. Those three steps took all the time the rest of the pattern, and we couldn't tell if he was moving at all. The brilliant intensity of the pattern had its own sound, echoed by the bees. The entire hive might have been struggling in unison with him. When he staggered, gasping to the central vacancy and plunged to his hands and knees, the four of us from Vo-Done applauded him.

"How do you get back?" I yelled.

"The bees!"

True to his orders, they came. The swarm appeared from the ceiling, pushing down through the combs like a seething pseudopod, and it enveloped him completely. They retreated upwards, and the blob moved along the ceiling to our position. He was released unharmed, and disturbing as it was, he looked well. 

"Excellent. Now let us head back to your mansion. You have much to tell me."

He agreed, and we trooped back the way we'd come. Lolimar whispered, "What's going on?" and I realized I'd explained none of this to the three of them.

"This is Derwent. He's going to put you back on your throne." I didn't look at Root while I said this, because my feelings about that were too complex for beehive contemplation. He didn't try to catch my gaze. Instead we headed upwards behind our exhausted host. Along the way Root coughed quietly, like he was clearing his throat. He said it was nothing, but I began to fear.


	14. Chapter 14

14

We ate Derwent's dining room, the place we'd met before. Gun was there, translating for my comrades, as were a few of the other omote. I drank his brandy very cautiously. Derwent's story was simple, and he drank judiciously over the long telling. This is his story.

"Vincent came to me through an acquaintance. I was working as a mercenary after retiring from the military and had just left a contract in Oblastan. Oblastan itself is a third world hell hole. The religious militants are at war with the smugglers, and both support themselves via air piracy. Are you familiar with air piracy? I didn't spend long enough in Arryn to know if it's a phenomenon there. If not, it's what it sounds like. Capture an airliner, hold the passengers and cargo for ransom, and shoot a few to make a point to the rest. It's tradition to execute two passengers when the pirates make their demands. There are some religious complexities involved so the formal military couldn't handle matters, leaving them to contract us for a sweep and clear. That's also what it sounds like.

Mercenary work is erratic at best so I was intending to take half a year to do some fishing, ostensibly take some communication classes to improve my resume as a personal security contractor, but had put my name in a few hats for project management. If I could get a major contract, I had the connections to pull upwards of several thousand operators, and those small-scale engagements are where the real money is. Private wars pay extremely well and demand is always high because the belligerents involved don't need to pay you during peace. They're the best for us as well. Get in, kill everything, and get out. That was what Vincent wanted me to do.

Money was irrelevant to him. He bought a jet to prove he was serious. While I believed he had resources, I thought he was insane when he told me he wanted me to conquer an alternate universe. A shadow, he called it. I've worked for a few madmen in the past, and it's never a good idea. It's too speculative. They pay excellently, but then you're defending a volcano from an international coalition, and rank and file soldiers get hanged for war crimes so some politician can make an example. I tried to back out of negotiations, and that's always tricky with a lunatic. We were on his plane at the time, and Vincent went forward to speak to the pilot. I was worried he was going to parachute out, which was the kind of stupid idea madmen come up with. Instead he dragged me off through shadow. 

We docked at a gas station hanging from a zeppelin. There were flights of raptors, wheeling like gulls and fighting with pteranodons for scraps. We flew on, and roc riders escorted us through their territory. The sky shifted between colors never found in a rainbow. I thought he drugged me. We landed for several days on a skywhale to have some engine maintenance, and that was when I finally believed him. I spend days walking around that thing. It's back held runways, hotels, and airports while it floated through clouds, eating birds like krill. 

When I admitted to myself something was going on, I sought him out and asked. He told me he was a magician with powers over shadow, one of a kind never before seen on my world. Unasked, he offered me additional proof of his powers. He told me to name something, and he could take me to it. I said the Fountain of Youth. It took him less than a week. Like I said, I was retired, but after drinking I was like a kid again. I had the health of my teenage years and all the wisdom I'd picked up wasting them. I could do it all again right. Vincent offered me the job then, and I said yes.

First we went to Amber. He kept me hidden in seedy hotels while he spent time in the palace. People recognized him, but no one admitted it. Just by being introduced with Vincent, the people would barely talk to me at all. That was when he showed me the pattern. He said he didn't know if it would be important, but he felt it was advisable I at least know what it looked like. In the interests of pure conjecture, I think he was worried you had one in Arryn and wanted me to be able to recognize it if you did. He explained a bit of the workings of it to me then, and while I didn't really start thinking about it till later, those were the seeds of my current plan.

After that we prepared for the invasion. We returned to Vie and I put a task force together, a million or so individuals of the appropriate skill set. I pushed for a reconnaissance of the target, but he refused. He said you'd detect it. So we prepared and prepared, I spent twenty years planning that operation, and when I was done I hadn't aged a day. I'd even made several fortunes in the stock market by waiting. Vincent had all the time in the world, but I wanted to spend the money I'd made.

Vincent was too timid. He got absorbed in all the things that could go wrong, and wanted to plan to infinite projection. That's impossible. Sooner or later you have to pull the trigger, and no matter what, then your battle plan becomes crap. That's why you hire the right people. When the brown tide rises, you want officers tall enough to see over it. We had our arguments over those twenty years, and they got bad. By the time I won, he was ready to strangle me. There his own obsession with planning saved me, because if I got replaced, he'd have to start all over. We went in.

Arryn took a little less than four days. The initial assault was eight hours. We appeared everywhere, took everything, and put down resistance before it had a chance. People on Arryn don't fight in groups well. They don't know unit tactics. Individually they're exceptional, but twenty operators can take one prize fighter apart. They also have issues with bees. I'm not sure why you picked Arryn, but the people cannot handle insects. We didn't have many fully developed swarms, but the few we did carried less than a hundred people away before the Arryte army just gave up. 

Of course we didn't find you. Vincent did a few days after the take-over, and you and he had your little tiff. I wasn't there so I can't tell you anything about it. Everything exploded and the world went to pot, and I got kicked out sideways. It was like my first shadow trip again, except there was no plane and everything sucked more. I was looking for you, though. I'd two queens with me in vials, and somehow, I knew where you were. There was a pull on me. Over the years I've wondered if that was something Vincent did, because it sounds like something he would do. Then I landed here.

How much detail do you want me to go into about what happened here? I can tell you a few things. First, I never saw Vincent again. I also never saw you again, nor anyone else I think might be associated with you. I hadn't seen a human being since I got here, and I didn't even know there were any in this shadow until I met the omote. The Geiger told me of you. He knew you by reputation through the yrch. I didn't know if it was really you or someone else, so I put watch points out looking for you with every courtesy. I'm not trying to hide anything, but what exactly do you want to know?"

I sipped my brandy and thought. Vincent and Sandy sounded like brothers. They acted alike and fought like siblings. They had that attitude of excessive over-interest that's common among family. If it was anyone else, they probably would have just ignored each other, but between brothers there's this obsession with replying, reacting, somehow responding to everything the other does. 

Derwent sounded like he didn't care about the siblings. He didn't talk dispassionately, for then I would have thought he was lying. But he sounded like he cared about the parts of the story he was in. His voice rose and he leaned forward in his chair when he was talking about something he did. Amber, shadow, those parts of the story he told when he was leaning back in his chair, giving details like necessary background information but only a matter of due diligence. If Derwent was one of the siblings, he was a marvellous actor.

"How did you come up with your plan about the pattern?" I asked. I nearly continued, mentioning my suspicions Vincent wouldn't have said much, but bit them back. 

"When I saw it, we went down to the dungeons of Castle Amber. Vincent crept in through secret ways. He mentioned looking and finding them after someone called Corwin escaped, but I can't tell you anything about him. Vincent got all weird when Corwin was mentioned, as he was, and perversely proud of name-dropping him while utterly refusing to answer questions. People in the city of Amber knew some things about the Pattern, and I caught a bit of rumors about it.

"What bothered me was that it's just a pattern. In all of shadow, some old lady had to trim one into her hedge sometime. There have to be dozens of lawn mazes that perfectly match its form. Even more so, random drunks have to stumble in the shape of the pattern occasionally, and they don't seem to spontaneously burst into flames or gain divine powers. I drew one out from memory and walked it in the years I was alone here, before meeting the omote or even the yrch, and nothing happened. 

"On the other hand if all shadow is cast by Amber, and the pattern is the light behind the city that casts the shadow, then a pattern in shadow can't just be something mundane. There's got to be something there, but I don't know it. Eventually I started thinking about making a pattern as close to the one of Amber as I could, and later, after meeting the omote, I learned their rituals of power. I incorporated those into my pattern as well. If the pattern is a ritual of power in Amber, and the omote have rituals of power in a shadow of Amber, then incorporating one into the other should make the pattern closer to its origin."

Derwent's mention of Corwin was interesting to me, though it was another point the captain mentioned with disinterest. Sandy had said something of Corwin when he'd not killed Vincent, and somehow Corwin had been the motivation for that. There were details there I wished I had. But Derwent was exceptionally interested in his pattern, and punctuated his words with sharp, stabbing motions of his hands. His eyes lit up when he discussed it. I wanted to press Derwent on both.

"You must have asked the people of Amber about this Corwin," I urged.

"They wouldn't talk about him. They wouldn't even mention his name. He was like a bogeyman."

"But they would talk about the pattern."

"The less people know about something, the more they're willing to talk about it. They would tell me endlessly about the pattern, politics, and law, and it was my task to shift nonsense from fact. I could have put a salt-miner through college listening to the people of Amber discuss their pattern."

I pursed my lips and thought for a long time. We all drank, and my trio waited on me with unusual patience. They acted surprised by me more than Derwent's stories, and I think it was because I was listen to him without flying into a rage. That was both pleasing and worrisome. 

"What name did Vincent call me?" I asked suddenly.

"He said your name was Finndo," Captain Derwent replied.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> That concludes part 1 of Lanterns. As of now these are my most recent revisions.


End file.
